There is definitely some brainwashing going on as to what is appropriate and not in an NHL game.
Stick swinging of any kind is heinous and the player should immediately be suspended...ok then.
Grabbing a star player to pound the ever-loving crap out of him is just "part of the game" and that player who was grabbed should "man-up" and fight back, or not do anything to defend himself otherwise. Sure
What you have to weigh is the intent to injure vs. the actual damage done. A slash at a giant goon's shin pads is not likely to injure him, especially as you're running as fast as you can the other direction. Neither is a tap into his hip pad as you're yelling at him about what just went down. The only play that may have actually hurt him is when Kessel slashed him in the back of the legs as he was already engaged with another player. Since Kessel was no longer in danger at that point, that was clearly an attempt to injure.
But then the only reason Scott was out there was to injure someone, and he picked the smallest player to fight who he would have absolutely destroyed if he actually got his hands on him. He even said "I'm going to jump you", so it was clear that's what he was out there to do. Now to me, Scott had the much bigger intent to injure and none of it would have occurred had he not grabbed the smallest player to fight. It was gutless.
For my money, Scott should take most of the blame and get the toughest suspension, even though technically his actions were not the most suspendible offense. He basically incited a riot, and it's plays like that the NHL needs to take a tough stance on to get this crap out of the game. You want to talk about an instigator penalty? This is the worst one I can think of and if they were serious about that rule they would boot Scott for 20 games.
Kessel deserves anything up to 5 games for the stupid stick-swinging stuff, but if Scott gets one game less than him it's a travesty of justice.