HC - It's funny that you mention the PHI S-76 "bird strike" crash. My friend Greg was flying an S-76 for PHI at the time. In the sim in Recurrent soon after the reasons for the crash were figured out, the IP gave him the dreaded dual engine failure in cruise. Greg did what was necessary and put the ship down successfully. Reportedly, he was the *first* pilot to do this; every other one before him crashed.
Now, no doubt Greg is a great pilot (probably even better than me), but so were the other S-76 guys "great pilots" too. I think the difference was that Greg really understood how a helicopter flew. He never verbalized this, but I believe that he instinctively hauled back on the cyclic as he lowered the collective. He knew what Pete Gillies is trying to remind us of: that it's not enough to just get the angle of attack of the blades to a minimum value - you have to get the angle of attack of the disk up to a positive value!
Furthermore, I don't know this but I suspect that the other crews (the ones who crashed) merely lowered the lever and let the RRPM drop to an unrecoverable value. That, or they never got the thing in a stabilized auto until it was too late.
We should be thanking Pete instead of vilifying him. Engine failures don't always happen way up high, with plenty of time and altitude to sort things out.