For the people that want to say it's a clean hit, and find certain angles to justify their claim, you just know they probably won't call it clean if it happened to one of their guys.
I think we all should agree that this kind of hit has not belonged in hockey for over a decade. If they can find ways to justify this type of hit, then their methodology is seriously flawed, and they are needlessly opening themeselves up to future inconsistencies in interpretation.
Over the years, we have felt this general wave of the league putting some onus on the hitter to be responsible for their actions. But this ruling felt like a step back where they were looking for excuses to get the hitter off the hook.
The spirit of player safety should obviously be in the interest of player safety, where you at least ere on the side of caution. Instead, they ered on the side of justifying a dangerous play.