Swallowing the Whistle in the Playoffs?
by Hawerchuk on Apr 5, 2010 9:00 AM EDT
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PrintWe know that referees are very reluctant to give power-plays in the playoffs. Right? Well, maybe not:
Remember, these are just power-play opportunities - coincidental penalties and fights do not count. Overall since 1987-88, there is a slight increase in penalty calls during the playoffs:
| GP | PP Opps | PP/G | |
| Regular Season | 42032 | 195650 | 4.65 |
| Playoffs | 3584 | 17373 | 4.88 |
Note that I'm missing the regular season for 2002-03. Long story. Anyways, the problem is that this overcounts the first round of the playoffs - perhaps there are fewer power plays as we get further into the playoffs?
Power-play opportunities tend to drop off 25-30 games into the playoffs, roughly in the 3rd or 4th game of the opening-round series. Splitting the playoffs at the 25-game point gives us:
| PP Opps | Games | PP/G | |
| First 25 | 5732 | 1050 | 5.46 |
| Later | 11641 | 2534 | 4.59 |
Now it's possible that there are fewer penalty calls in the 3rd period or overtime of close games. We don't have that data dating back to 1987. But it's possible that there are just more people watching close playoff games than any game during the season, and so more people are aware of lax refereeing. In general, there barely any fewer power-play opportunities in the later rounds of the playoffs than there are during the regular season.
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I guess there is no way to validate this, but I’d venture another hypothesis: players are fare more often crossing the line in the playoffs, thus leading to higher raw totals but lower totals relative to the amount of fouls commited.
But the “more people watching closely” is an important aspect, no doubt about it.
I agree 100%
this is exactly what I was going to say after reading this post. I still think the referees let more go in the playoffs than they do in the regular season.
D.O.
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by David Oleksy on Apr 5, 2010 11:31 AM EDT up reply actions
And we’re all missing data from 2004-2005. Another long story.
I suspect that penalty prone players, especially fighters, play less in the post-season. Any way to look at ice time figures for them?
Any data on penalty shots? Or are they too uncommon even in the regular season to draw any conclusions?
by DoctorMyBrainHurts on Apr 5, 2010 11:01 AM EDT reply actions
I did the stats for last year’s playoffs. The PPs decreased by round. Have you taken into account minutes played as opposed to games. OTs certainly increase the number of minutes/game in which to get a PP. There is a fall off in calls.
The last point about the decreasing number of penalties by round. Younger refs are dropped from the rotation as they go to more senior refs. There are less quality skaters among the seniors than among the juniors. The better skating refs tend to call more because they get a better view of the ice. I do have numbers for that.
Are you saying that games are systematically longer in the later rounds than in earlier rounds? Obviously penalties vary by period – we just don’t have that data going back to 1987.
I think that’s very interesting about older refs being weaker skaters. Have you posted anything about that before? I would love to link to your work on it.
Not longer in later rounds. I don’t have a distribution of OTs.
Read down the first page of the thread. It has the summaries from much larger tables.
http://hfboards.com/showthread.php?t=686321
Obviously there is nothing that can be done statistically with skating. But a small group of us have made a strong effort at getting a catalog of issues over 4 years. We combine stats and eyeball observations. The skating is pure eyeball. It is done knowing what their instructions are as to where to skate and how to position themselves.
There are a multitude of other issues that go into calling. In some respects, referees are salesmen. They are constantly communicating during play, letting players know if they are close to crossing the line. The ones who communicate best have lower call counts as well. There are refs who are “old school” and do game management around calls which is really not good. Again low call counts. Sometimes skating changes due to injuries which are rarely disclosed and you see a call count drop.
Also this is not to say that all older refs are weaker skaters. Some do very well late into their career, some do not. But, there has been a direction to hire stronger skaters in the first place. Fraser was a good skater for a long time but has fallen off since his knee injury a few years ago. Watson is probably the strongest of the older guys right now.
+1 on the PP/min thing. I swear I’ve read something about this before but I can’t remember where or when. The number of PPs per game is higher in the playoffs, but the number of PPs per 60 minutes is lower because of OT.
Despite the potential for multiple overtime games, no team I saw averaged more than 66 minutes a game. I pussed out and used medians instead of means for penalty minutes, but that might be better anyway given the small sample sizes of some of the playoff teams (cough, Blues).
2008-2009 PIM/GAME
regular 9.8 – 17.5 median 14.0
playoff 9.8 – 25.8 median 15.0
2007-2008 PIM/GAME
regular 11.4 – 18.1 median 14.1
playoff 7.7 – 23.5 median 12.4
2008 MEAN GAME TIME
regular 60.89 min
playoff 61.73 min
2007 MEAN GAME TIME
regular 60.70 min
playoff 62.59 min
2008 rate
regular 13.79 PIM/60 min
playoff 14.60 PIM/60 min
2007 rate
regular 13.94 PIM/60 min
playoff 11.96 PIM/60 min
There may have been a small drop off in the 2007 playoffs. If anything, the rate in 2008 looks higher than the regular season rate.
by DoctorMyBrainHurts on Apr 7, 2010 12:17 AM EDT up reply actions
I’m not sure whether this has any actual impact in the NHL or not, but as an official, I know newer guys are a bit more reluctant to make a marginal or difficult call then a more experienced official might be. More experienced officials also tend to be more “seasoned” (they see the play better) and tend to make more calls in the areas of the rink between the two officials, where a call may not clearly fall under the high official’s responsibility, or low official’s responsibility.
Since the NHL uses their best referees (who, presumably, are the most experienced) to work the playoffs, it would make sense that an infraction in the neutral zone that the greener official might have let go in the regular season, gets called by the more experienced official that sees it in the playoffs.
Pure speculation on my part, but its something to consider.
I am a hockey fan first, and a Caps fan second.
Iwearstripes,
The stats and observation do not coincide with what you say. I do see seasoning issues on safety calls with some of the younger guys reluctant to call majors. On the more run of the mill calls, the better skaters tend to do a bit more calling regardless of seniority.
In terms of the NHL, they use their best to an extent but there is a tendency to determine “best” based on seniority rather than real performance. There is some favoritism that is rather blatant. In terms of progression, recent views indicate that blatantly blown calls in the playoffs will get a ref dropped regardless of other issues.
In terms of the directions for refs, I take safety, fairness and staying out of the way of the play as the three prime directives. They have had recent promotions where staying out of the way was clearly not a priority. There is directive in positioning guidelines that the zone ref is to go to the net on scrums. One of last years finals refs clearly has issues with doing that.
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