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The problem is that at game speed players don't know if it is a clean hit or not.
Going back to the Artyukhin hit on Doughty a couple years ago. The players on the ice didn't know it was a knee-on-knee...it looked like a clean hit at first glance. Nothing was done about it and I recall Murray and Lombardi both being unhappy about it.
The players tend to err on the side of dirty hit, because you don't want to be "that guy" on the ice not sticking up for a teammate.
Players are going to fight first and ask questions later just so they aren't labeled with a "bad teammate" tag, because most of the time the players aren't watching the hit.
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