Hockey is a tough and physical game played by the toughest darn atheletes in the world. The combination of offense and defense, speed and power, hitting and passing is what makes it great. If you do things to throw off that balance the game suffers, in my opinion. These rule changes are over those lines in far too many areas and I think they will be bad for the game.
Making defensemen play with their hands tied behind their backs throws off that balance. There should
never be things in the rules like are featured in this video. Defenders quite simply cannot hit players
who have the puck anymore.
The video says that if a player recieves a pass and a defender "can't
immediately make a hit he
must let the player pass him by". That's like putting a time limit on how long a player can carry the puck... if a forward cannot take a shot he has until a count of three until he
must pass or shoot or a delay penalty will be called. :rolleyes:
The problem with the other "changes" are that they create more problems than they "solve". They are careful to site the health of players so nobody can argue. Like you say, nobody wants to see players injured. At the same time checking is an essential and basic skill of the game. If you can't take a punch don't be a boxer. If you can't take a hit don't be a hockey player.
I don't want to see people blasted into the boards when their face is to the glass. However the "for the safety of the players" argument has led to their being a penalty for hitting players from behind into the boards. Fine. Well intentioned. We don't want players hurt.
In
practice out on the ice now we have players intentionally turning their back to the check instead of bracing/absorbing for the check. They want the defender to be called for the penalty. They are now intentionally putting themseleves in the exact risk of injury situation that the rule is supposed to be "saving" them from. That is what happens with these "well intentioned" rules. I've seen a lot of players get hurt turning away from a check to draw the penalty, more than if they just called the charging and boarding penalties that are already in the current rules. This is the continuing problem with the league, make new rules or changes when there are already solutions written into the rules.
Making these changes about not being able to hit people in the crease (safety) and calling people for using their free arm to hold people along the boards (increasing pace of the game) are both also well-intentioned. We want a game that doesn't come to a standstill and we don't want players hurt. When applied to the actual game though this means that we now take away two more of a defenseman's abilities/skills/roles. Can't try and get the puck away with a battle along the boards because I'll get called, can't move a guy out of the crease (even without a crosscheck to the back or slash) because he'll go down like he's shot by a sniper in the balcony if I get near him looking to draw that new tighter called penalty.
Comibined with those three "new rules/focuses" we have defenders who can't hit anyone unless they've just gotten the puck and they can
immediately hit them, they can't get near players if they are near the boards and have the puck, and they can't match up with anyone in front of the net. Boy, that'll be great to watch... I bet defenseman are glad they've been training their whole lives to play the position and now can only skate around to retrieve deflected puck and try to pokecheck oncoming offensive players. Thrilling.
You will now get called for 'obstruction' as a defenseman for pinning offensive players on the boards and for clearing anyone out of the crease. How far we've come in a matter of years huh? We've gone from "if even just your skate lace is in the crease it's no goal" to "If an offensive player is in the opponenets crease he can't be touched". How exactly did that happen? 
thats also in my favor, but not for the physical aspects of the game. no red line anymore and goaltender puckhandling zone are ok. but to penalize a defender if he's even looking in the same direction as a forward is awful. we had these obstruction rule 4-5 years ago, and after half a year no referee calls it anymore. hope its the same this time. poor defenders. they got no recognition til now (theres only an award for the best offensive defenseman, nothing for the best defensive ) 
and now their learned talents will be completly useless.
However in his last season he had 52 assists (I'm not that much of a stat junkie by the way, it happens to be sticked into this jersey...) and while always known for playing great defense was a weapon on the offensive end.