You know what's funny. Steve Dangle (leafs podcaster) broke down playoff games the leafs have played that were reffed by Wes McAuley. And it turns out like most NHL games the two teams total penalties taken were very similar. (Almost always within 1 penalty).
And almost all of the exceptions either favored the leafs or included penalties out of the refs discretion (puck over glass, failed challenges, or a player doing something super illegal like Bunting did.
So this whole these specific refs are biased against leafs is pretty nonsensical. It's a problem every team has where the penalties will always be close.
This can be very misleading. They could have given the Leafs 4 powerplays in a row to ‘even up’ the penalties in the 3rd period on Tuesday, but the game was already over.
Just looking at how many penalties are called doesn’t matter. How many were not called? What was the state of the game/momentum when they were called?
And it’s not just the Leafs, it’s a problem in the NHL.
Didn’t the islanders just get absolutely screwed by the refs?
What normally happens is that the refs will actively try to keep the penalty calls somewhat close or even. If your opponent commits 35 penalty worthy infractions, they won’t be called for all of them.
If your team only commits 4 penalty worthy infractions, they’ll get called on all of them.
This leaves the opponents able to get away with 31 penalties that the refs won’t call, all out of fear of one team spending too much more time in the box than the other.
