Stealing from a certain Canadian psychologist, hockey (as well as many other things in life) is at its best when straddling the line between order and chaos. Too much of either, though, is a bad thing. In this case, order is the finesse brand of hockey with fast skating, lots of goals, but no physicality or grittiness, while chaos is the thuggish brand of hockey filled with fights, animosity, big hits, but also cheap shots, injuries, and goonery.
I became a hockey fan in the late 90's. Looking only from then until now, the first years if my fanhood were when the game was at "peak chaos". It was the era of giant D-men, the trap, roid rage, and some of the best rivalries ever seen, but at the cost of the game being slow and the playoffs turning into a contest to see who could injure the other teams' skill players the fastest. I would watch the occasional regular season game, network games if it was a good rivalry, and the playoffs. This brand of hockey persisted roughly until the lockout, at which point the pendulum began swinging towards order.
The post-lockout seasons were, IMO, when the NHL was at its best. The game seemed to have a little bit of everything, including the occasional "old-time hockey" game mixed in maybe once or twice per season. My interest peaked around the 2011 SCF, when you had two teams with completely different identities - one based on order, one based on chaos - going at it while hating each other's guts. Even though the "chaos" team won that series, in the seasons that followed more and more teams shifted to the "order" style of finesse hockey.
This shift has continued to this day, and I think we are at or are approaching "peak order" hockey. Personally, my interest in the NHL is as low as it's ever been. I will browse the occasional Youtube highlights video and will watch a couple playoff games, maybe an occasional period or two of a regular season game. I did watch the Isles' first game back at the Coliseum, which was played with a lot of emotion and admittedly pretty good. But I don't see my interest changing back to what it was anytime soon.
There are many things one can blame - concussions, too many suspensions, the NHL trying to attract "casual" fans (every casual fan I know loves physical hockey), the blue collar fans being priced out of the arena, PC culture, lack of people taking steroids, the increased player salaries, etc etc. All I know is if I am in the mood for passionless sports entertainment, I will choose golf every time. In the meantime, I get my hockey fix from the NCAA.
I don't need bench-clearing brawls, bone-crunching hits and the chaos kind of hockey from when I first started watching. It doesn't even need to be fights... a little emotion is all I ask (although I do believe fights are a bellwether, so-to-speak, of how emotional the games are).
I do think the pendulum will eventually swing the other way. The NHL ultimately needs our money and attention to survive, and there's a lot of pissed off fans out there. The main selling point hockey has over soccer is its physicality, when the NHL recognizes this in 10 years, things will change. Money talks.