The risk of damage on Super Puma family is more to do with head damage or what happens after rotors have stopped - a rotor blade has been known to sail up to nearly 90 degrees in a gust after shutdown, then fall back down onto droop stop (coning stops having previously been trashed!) whilst pilots are still wondering how to secure the blades.
There have been plenty of cases of keeping the thing running on deck by pumping in fuel, pending an abatement of wind to allow shutdown. Lots of coffee and a shift system required by the pilots!
Interestingly a certain oil company would not allow departure with rotor brake inoperative (its allowed in MEL) in case a/c had to shut down offshore, but were quite happy to allow operation beyond the RFM shutdown limits.
On the subject of rescue, current thinking is that the highest probability of ending up in the water occurs in the vicinity of the destination. Perhaps due to engine failure, perhaps due to crew error, but anyway safety margin is probably less during arrival and departure phase. In the history of the N Sea Super Puma, there has never been a survivable ditching due to a failure en-route (TIGK lightning strike was pretty close to the offshore installation IIRC) so this thinking is borne out by experience, even if perhaps it doesn't seem that logical on first inspection.
HC