Shawn,
As you claim to be an investigator having dealt with several 350 crashes, it surprizes me a great deal that you are so fixed up on just one failure like you are. Most of the crashes I know about does not involve mechanical failure at all, but poor judgement and airmanship, much like the common cause in most EMS accidents in the US.....
Being an investigator with some credibility, one can't draw conclusions before the helicopter has been lifted out of the water like you did in your first post!! And seems to continue to do.
Now, if I would have a Hyd-failure over 4 deg water, I for sure would give a flying f..k about any restrictions zone and head for the nearest dry land to put down on.
As the pictures show very little damage, this looks like a forced landing and a ditching that went well, but since the helicopter appears to not have floats, the crew had to evacuate to not drown inside. With this little damage on the helicopter, and the occupants found outside, I would assume that they were concious and exited the helicopter themselves.
So Shawn, does this accident look like an uncontrolled crash or does it look controlled? If controlled, do you think someone with "only" a hyd failure would elect to ditch a non-float equipped helicopter into 4-5 C deg water?, with a beach or heck the departure airport within 10-15 min of flying??