SirLoinOfCloth
Registered User
OK I'll bite.I mean, it very clearly is against its top players. He is drawing a net of around one penalty every three to four games. Have you watched him play? I have to assume you don't actually watch hockey.
I'll give you another tip, although I assume you know what you are doing. When you say since _______'s rookie year, aka 2015 here, if it is an accumulation stat, it is not meaningful because it lines up directly with your player career.
McDavid's average ice time since the 2020/21 season is ~22 mins per game. His penalties drawn/60 is 1.45, so per game based on an average of 22 mins, he's drawing a penalty around once every other game (0.55 penalties per game)
Let's look at one of the closest comparable players based on skill/speed/status- MacKinnon. Also an average of ~22 mins per game. He's drawing 1.21/60, so around 0.44 penalties per game.
Drai: ~22 mins, 0.81/60, 0.29 penalties per game.
I don't have unrealistic expectations that every single time an infraction is committed they are going to call it. Dozens of calls go unpenalized every game. Teams would never play at 5v5 if they called everything. That may affect top players more, because they are on the ice more, and attract more attention. But it's not a league vs McDavid thing by any means. The original quoted stat was complete garbage. The officiating in the league sucks, but quite predictably. You're rarely going to get a powerplay in the last few minutes of a close game unless there's something egregious, or a delay of game penalty. It sucks. Officials also love to even things up even when the play on the ice does not suggest that the penalties should be even. Again, it sucks. But it's not a slight against McDavid.
As for picking 2015, I just picked a year that was a decent sample size, 9 years in this case, nothing to do with anyone's rookie year. You can run these same stats for 9,8,7 etc years and they look pretty similar. McDavid is getting more net penalties than anyone else in the league. And maybe that's the way it should be, given he's the best player in the world? But what it does show is that he's not getting treated unfairly relative to any other top player. He's outpacing them all in net penalties.