At What Point Does the Market Start Talking About the Lack of Power Plays?

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I don't mean to ask when fans will start complaining about this.

What I'm asking is at what point does the team and the media start making mention of this?

A few years ago, Edmonton was at the bottom of the list in terms of calls.

The players, the team management, and especially the media stirred up a furor and they shot to the top of the list.

Mike Johnson has mentioned it a few times, in passing, during games how the team doesn't draw penalties.

Good Miller brought up the 0 instances of 5 on 3 this year, just last night, and he made reference to it a handful of times last year.

There isn't much focus on it outside of this though.


It's something that defies all of the typical correlary factors for drawing penalties:

Puck possession
Team speed
Offensive zone time
Style of play
Star players and their reputation
Team success




Toronto consistently finds itself at or near the top of all these aspects of the game, and they have played a fast paced, offensively driven style of hockey for 8 years now, have a Hart winner and a few other star players, yet they seem to break all of the unwritten rules in this subject.
There was an analysis done a few years to try a determine what measurable preceding play was most predictive of drawing a penalty. Shots on goal, scoring chance, goal, hit, etc.

To the surprise of no one who watches hockey the only correlation that could be found for drawing a penalty was taking a penalty.

It's game management plain and simple. If you don't take many penalties you wont get many power plays. Refs typically won't give you a 6-2 power play advantage, regardless of what the actual on ice play suggests. They'll ignore penalties or find some on you, one way or another they will even it out.

Tampa over the last several years has really mastered this. They believe they will beat you on special teams so they get the game greasy (especially if they're losing) knowing that no matter how restrained or disciplined the opponent is the refs will make sure at the end of the night the PPs are 5 each.
 
There is a data set out there that says that teams that commit the most penalties...get evened out with PP chances. It seems because we are not very aggressive with our style of play that Refs will only give us a few PP's because they want to keep the game even. If you looked at the most penalized teams...they also are among the leaders in PP chances. So, it seems that this even-steven shit is from the league office and playing "The right way" as Babs used to say...is not going to get us any PP time compared to playing the wrong way.
 
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Stopped caring about it. the league f***s us over at every turn and it's been a thing for as long as I can remember now. A lot of these western Canada refs hate Toronto more than anything and they don't even try and hide it.
 
What's the difference between being at the bottom or being in the middle of the pack? Penalty a game? a week?
 
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LOL, why does it benefit the league to keep Toronto Maple Leafs down? It’s laughable people think there is some kinda bias against Toronto. Get a grip.
If anything, it would be the other way around. Every ownership group stands to benefit financially from the Leafs winning big.
 
Looking at how the league hands out punishment, the (with no suspension history) Bunting suspension would be considered the worst action in the NHL since the 2021/2022 season (worse than Benn crosschecking Stones head into the ice, etc.)

Sound about right?
 
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Taking a deeper look into the statistics over these past 8 seasons, and combining them with the generally accepted rule of thumb that the majority of penalties come from a position of defending the play, there are definite correlations that can be calculated.

For example, I plopped down the rank of each team in terms of:

Total shots​
Shot difference (shots on goal minus shots against)​
Shot attempts​
Shot attempt difference (shot attempts minus shot attempts given up)​
Blocks per game (because you don't block shots in the offensive zone)​
Giveaways per game (because if you give the puck away, you immediately start to defend)​
Team Points % (because as we've all been told that if you want to catch a break, be better)​

And from these, got a generally good idea of where teams should be in terms of their power play ranks.

Of the 32 teams, 12 fell into a calculated power play rank within 5 places of where they actually fall (Vegas and Seattle obviously skew this number a bit).

21 of the 32 teams fall within 10 spots of where they "should" be. Again Vegas and Seattle make things a little askew here.

But the outliers are interesting:

Winnipeg sits about 11 places too high.​
Arizona sits about 13 places too high.​
Chicago sits about 14 places too high.​
Detroit and Vancouver sit about 16 places too high.​
Ottawa finds itself a whopping 23 spots too high in terms of power plays actually given relative to performance.​
Carolina gets the shaft at 17 places too low.​
Columbus also gets shafted at 18 places too low.​
Toronto gets it the worst at 19 places too low.​


Of course, We all know that the biggest correlation to power plays given is how many times the team is short handed.

So, I had to add another variable into the mix:
Rank of times short​


This is a much simpler calculation.
And we see that 21 teams fall within 5 spots when comparing their ranks of power plays to times short.
However, there are some major outliers here as well:
Florida finds a 10 spot gap.​
Winnipeg and Pittsburgh enjoy a 12 spot gap.​
Philadelphia has a nice 13 spot gap.​
Chicago has the best it all with a 15 spot difference between times short and power play opportunities.​
On the other hand, Arizona is down by 11 spots.​
Montreal is down by 19 spots.​
And Anaheim is given the ultimate shaft here with a massive 28 spot difference. They lead the league in penalties taken and rank 29th in power plays.​


As it turns out, Chicago seems to be helped the most by NHL officiating, followed by Ottawa, Winnipeg, Philly and Vancouver.

Anaheim gets the short end of the stick the worst, followed by Montreal, Toronto, Columbus and Carolina.
 

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LOL, why does it benefit the league to keep Toronto Maple Leafs down? It’s laughable people think there is some kinda bias against Toronto. Get a grip.


Because it is not a 'competitive' league. Each team in the NHL is a 'partner'. Some partners are more financially secure than others. What you are seeing is a glorified ponzi scheme.
 
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I didn't think there was a way for the Leafs to deteriorate even more than they have but you've found it.
 
The vast majority of penalties in the league every year without fail are defensive penalties - hooks, trips, interference, etc. Tough guy penalties are offset half the time and don’t happen nearly as often as everyone pretends.

Either the other team never needs to hook, trip, interfere with us to stop our consistently top offense and decides to defend us clean year in year out or ref bias and game management plays a role, simple as that.
I think you misunderstood. Those players are the ones who drive through and battle for the puck, forcing the other team to take "hooks, trips, interference, etc", whereas our top players will generally pass or shoot rather than try to steamroll through.
 
Taking a deeper look into the statistics over these past 8 seasons, and combining them with the generally accepted rule of thumb that the majority of penalties come from a position of defending the play, there are definite correlations that can be calculated.

For example, I plopped down the rank of each team in terms of:

Total shots​
Shot difference (shots on goal minus shots against)​
Shot attempts​
Shot attempt difference (shot attempts minus shot attempts given up)​
Blocks per game (because you don't block shots in the offensive zone)​
Giveaways per game (because if you give the puck away, you immediately start to defend)​
Team Points % (because as we've all been told that if you want to catch a break, be better)​

And from these, got a generally good idea of where teams should be in terms of their power play ranks.

Of the 32 teams, 12 fell into a calculated power play rank within 5 places of where they actually fall (Vegas and Seattle obviously skew this number a bit).

21 of the 32 teams fall within 10 spots of where they "should" be. Again Vegas and Seattle make things a little askew here.

But the outliers are interesting:

Winnipeg sits about 11 places too high.​
Arizona sits about 13 places too high.​
Chicago sits about 14 places too high.​
Detroit and Vancouver sit about 16 places too high.​
Ottawa finds itself a whopping 23 spots too high in terms of power plays actually given relative to performance.​
Carolina gets the shaft at 17 places too low.​
Columbus also gets shafted at 18 places too low.​
Toronto gets it the worst at 19 places too low.​


Of course, We all know that the biggest correlation to power plays given is how many times the team is short handed.

So, I had to add another variable into the mix:
Rank of times short​


This is a much simpler calculation.
And we see that 21 teams fall within 5 spots when comparing their ranks of power plays to times short.
However, there are some major outliers here as well:
Florida finds a 10 spot gap.​
Winnipeg and Pittsburgh enjoy a 12 spot gap.​
Philadelphia has a nice 13 spot gap.​
Chicago has the best it all with a 15 spot difference between times short and power play opportunities.​
On the other hand, Arizona is down by 11 spots.​
Montreal is down by 19 spots.​
And Anaheim is given the ultimate shaft here with a massive 28 spot difference. They lead the league in penalties taken and rank 29th in power plays.​


As it turns out, Chicago seems to be helped the most by NHL officiating, followed by Ottawa, Winnipeg, Philly and Vancouver.

Anaheim gets the short end of the stick the worst, followed by Montreal, Toronto, Columbus and Carolina.
Put absolute values in column E, G and I and average them out. You will get an error% pretty close to a random distribution. So your metric has very little correlation to penalties drawn.
 
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There was an analysis done a few years to try a determine what measurable preceding play was most predictive of drawing a penalty. Shots on goal, scoring chance, goal, hit, etc.

To the surprise of no one who watches hockey the only correlation that could be found for drawing a penalty was taking a penalty.

It's game management plain and simple. If you don't take many penalties you wont get many power plays. Refs typically won't give you a 6-2 power play advantage, regardless of what the actual on ice play suggests. They'll ignore penalties or find some on you, one way or another they will even it out.

Tampa over the last several years has really mastered this. They believe they will beat you on special teams so they get the game greasy (especially if they're losing) knowing that no matter how restrained or disciplined the opponent is the refs will make sure at the end of the night the PPs are 5 each.
Does that explain why some teams get as much as 20% more penalties drawn than taken, and others get 20% more taken than drawn?
 
Last year Toronto was 17th in penalties drawn, 15th in penalties taken, and 16th in net penalties.

You can't get much closer to middle of the pack.

I suppose there could be a conspiracy to even out the number of penalties to hide the fact that there's a conspiracy to give us more penalties and fewer PPs. :sarcasm:
 
I think you misunderstood. Those players are the ones who drive through and battle for the puck, forcing the other team to take "hooks, trips, interference, etc", whereas our top players will generally pass or shoot rather than try to steamroll through.

Stutzle and Bunting steamroll through people?
 
I do know one thing - we lead the league in too many men penalties because our team all failed math 101
 
Ok, so you've proven that your metric has very little correlation to penalties drawn. What's your next metric?
No metric.

The question I was wondering, is when the market (players, staff, media) start making comments about the lack of power plays and how disconnected the actual play on the ice is from it.

Maybe we'll get to the point where media start asking the GM what kind of greasy players they think of signing in order to take more penalties and, as a direct result, get more power plays.



Not everything is a call to arms.

Sometimes information is simply just that:
Data and information


And sometimes when there are statistical aberrations and abnormalities, they need to be brought to light as clarifications asked.


We're all brought up being taught that hard work and determination is the way to play the game right and that the officials will be there to ensure the integrity of the sport.
What's weird is that this is patently untrue at the highest level of the sport and that in itself, should be eyebrow-raising for the league.

And since we know it's not, then I wonder at what point teams and the media will start raising questions about the blatant disconnect between officiating and the play on the ice.
 
LOL, why does it benefit the league to keep Toronto Maple Leafs down? It’s laughable people think there is some kinda bias against Toronto. Get a grip.
Because the league prefers the Leafs as a bank they can go to to get money for the teams Bettman REALLY favors, like Arizona and Florida. For f***'s sake, the Leafs partially bankrolled Tampa's two Cup wins, because even while willing Tampa needed to dip into the team sharing fund !
 
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