Frustrated after a poor showing on the night, Lake lashed out at Petrie in the third term and threw him to the ground. The pair wrestled and Lake appeared to forcibly push his hand down onto Petrie's throat.
"How is Brian Lake to know whether he is not compressing the trachea and breaking the cartilage," Larkins said on 3AW.
"I don't how much force he was putting on, I can only look at what it looked like the force he was putting on, but if I had been a doctor or a trainer or a physio...I was concerned that the player who was having his trachea compressed was going to asphyxiate. That is what I would be saying from what I saw."
Media experts suggest Lake will be headed straight for the tribunal.
"Lake is expected to be charged with misconduct and the matter sent directly to the AFL Tribunal as there’s no specific offence related to choking," the Herald Sun's Bruce Matthews wrote.
"If Lake is found guilty, any prospective penalty will be inflated by 37.50 demerit points carried over from him serving a three-match suspension for striking Fremantle’s Michael Walters in last year’s Grand Final.
"An AFL investigations officer will interview both players tomorrow and Petrie must give a frank version of the incident to avoid being charged with eye gouging Lake."
Lake has also come under fire from team-mates with Jordan Lewis saying "what was done ... is probably not acceptable at our club".
"He (Lake) has probably been known in the past to do stuff like that and have brain fades. We haven't seen that at our club as yet. We saw it ... which is what we don't expect from our players," Lewis said.
Matthew Lloyd called Lake's actions a "shocking look for the game" and believes he will be suspended for three weeks.
Hawk coach Alastair Clarkson was also critical of Lake's poor discipline.
"He was a bit scratchy tonight and we're pretty disappointed with that five or six-minute patch (in the third term),'' Clarkson said.
"He was pretty average tonight and we're disappointed with that, but we move on and we hope that he responds from that."
