The thing with any player like Cooke is not so much that they're 'dirty', but if they make their game by going around trying to hit everyone eventually you're going to catch a guy in the wrong position. Same for any pro player really, but if you're talking about guys who throw under 50 a season vs those doing 200+ hits that's a big discrepancy in odds for a bad hit.
I've always felt the truly 'dirty' players were guys like Bryan Marchment, who went for players knees. The handful of guys in a Canucks uniform in the era we're talking about: Cooke, Ruutu, Burrows, Torres, etc, walked the line a little but I never thought they were particularly dirty for us.