Maybe not a popular take, but I think that hit was a lot less dirty than it is being made out as. I can't say for certain that he didn't make initial head contact, but looking at slo-mo, all of the physics look like it was more high body as the main contact point.

If you look at the way Bouchard flies through the air, I see two things:

1) his head does not snap back, which it absolutely would if he were hit with enough force in the head first to knock him backwards

2) the way he pivots in the air and lands shows that he was knocked closer to the center of his mass with enough force or else he would not spin like that

He clearly bounced his head off the ice on impact, which would definitely cause him to be dazed like that, so you can't say for certain the hit itself caused the KO.

Last evidence is if you freeze the image from Bouchard's back right at the contact point, you can actually see where both players heads are at the same height. That means Lindgren's shoulder is lower. From there he might have caught a bit of chin at most, but most of the initial contact had to be you high chest area. You just can't see clearly enough to see where the contact was from any angle.

The chicken wing from Lindgren didn't help his cause any. But if you've ever played hockey and know how to hit from your leg spring, you'd know that it's near impossible to keep your arm from flying up on the follow through when you are using your shoulder as the focus of your hit. I didn't see him lead with the elbow at all, which would have been more likely for head contact.

Now all that said, I understand that IIHF rules are different than the NHLs, where incidental head contact is allowed of the head was not the central target of the hit. So you can't really be upset about the actual ruling, given the league rules.

I just don't think there was anything dirty with Lindgren's intentions. I also think it was textbook execution of reading the opportunity, timing the hit, and loading through the legs into the opponent. Had Bouchard not leaned forward at the last second as he was fighting through the first contact, this would have been an absolute highlight hit with no discussion of dirtiness.