Are freaking kidding me? Please tell me you are joking. Seriously, you cannot really think that while this guy was skating around he thought, "oh man this kid is 16 years of age, well if I hit him really hard, it will get me a lot of publicity and the resulting factor will be me getting famous on the internet."
Because that is the logic you are implying.
It's HOCKEY. I thought hockey players were supposed to be tough, what happened to the old days when none of the players had teeth? If these 16 year olds are so vulnerable, then why are they even on the ice? You can't handicap everyone else because you don't want little bobby joe getting hurt.
If he had made this hit, and the guy got up and skated off and scored a goal, you never would have thought twice about it.