To me, it shows that the players don't care about potential repercussions because there are next to none. A 2 min penalty for interference. Getting ejected from the current game, and - in the grand scheme of their salaries - a menial fine. A 1-game suspension. That doesn't make them think twice, which is evidenced by the fact that players still constantly do blatantly dirty things - slewfoots, spearing people in the nuts, blatant and predatory blindside high hits, etc.
The only times we've seen the punishments gets serious is when you have a Tom Wilson or Raffi Torres finally get 20+ game suspensions after their 83rd infractions and a long history of just run-of-the-mill penalized (and surely tons of non-penalized) plays. Which, again, shows players that they have free reign to do what they want for just about however long they want under the guise of "They're just playing their game and 'toeing the line'." Matt Cooke's longest suspension was 10 games. He was the reason they created a rule to deal with blindside hits, to which he did not retroactively have to respond to. He wasn't given any sort of suspension or fine for the hit that cause the League to create the rule they made. They can be repeat offenders and the suspension length will go up from 1 game to like 3-5 games at most, most of the time. Over the course of an 82-game season, that means nothing to them.
What it says to me is that the rules doling out punishment are set up wrong, and are wildly inconsistent. Hits to the head - any hits to the head - should be met with serious punishment if the league wants players to think about what they're doing. Intentional, accidental, anything. Minimum 10 game suspension for any headshot, adding 10 games for each subsequent infraction. If they did something to that effect, I'd bet the farm that players would be exponentially more cautious.
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