OTF Classic

Thanks to Red & Black Hockey and Puck Daddy over at Yahoo, we have word that the American Hockey League, at the behest of the NHL, is going to experiment with cutting minor penalties in half during regular season overtime sessions. Earlier this year Brian Burke floated the idea in the press, and now it appears that will actually see the light of day. Clearly, the free agency market is so unappealing this summer that GM's have too much time on their hands, and are dreaming up unnecessary rules changes to keep themselves occupied. Quoth the The Star : "This season, 39 per cent of the penalties in OT that have resulted in a 4-on-3 power play have produced the winning goal in NHL games. It stands to reason, [Colin] Campbell said, that one-minute penalties will produce fewer goals, and therefore more games will go to shootouts." Frankly, I'm dumbfounded here. What exactly is the problem that the league is trying to solve? The whole point of going to 4-on-4...

Now that I've got my penalty data (mostly) reconstructed, I can present the final Penalty Plus/Minus numbers for the NHL 2007-2008 Regular Season, with Dustin Brown of the Los Angeles Kings holding off the talented trio of Crosby, Datsyuk and Ovechkin to lead the league. As usual, this list is largely dominated by talented offensive players, who force opponents into taking penalties to avoid giving up dangerous scoring chances. At the bottom of the list are mostly defensemen logging major ice time against elite opponents. To me, what is most interesting is which players go against that stereotyping; offensive players who take too many penalties and end up too low on this list, and elite defenders who carry a heavy burden, without leaving their teammates shorthanded. Using this perspective, a few players in particular stand out; Colorado's John-Michael Liles at a very respectable +7, or Boston's Marc Savard at a woeful -15, with Nashville captain Jason Arnott not much bett...

Last week the finalists for the Lady Byng and Norris trophies were announced, and while fans can speculate as to which player is most deserving of these hallowed awards, we must also reflect on other, less celebrated achievements from the 2007-08 NHL Regular Season. Yes, it's time for the 2008 Alternative NHL Awards, recognizing the best of the best (or is it the worst of the worst?) when it comes to on-ice illicit activity... For historical reference, the 2007 and 2006 award listings are also available. Boarding : Usually the haven of lumbering , slack-jawed knuckle draggers who aim to intimidate opponents, this year's crop of Bellicose Boarders included a number of smaller, workaday checking forwards like Todd Marchant (3) and Kris Draper (4), who tied for the league lead alongside defenseman Andrej Meszaros of Ottawa. Based on the fact that he's obviously working through some "issues" since being so viciously boarded by Claude Lemieux in the 1996 We...

Attention, NHL General Managers; just in time for all you last minute-shoppers, I've got your Penalty Plus/Minus* update through the games of February 24, 2008. With Sidney Crosby out of the lineup for so long, Dustin Brown of the Los Angeles Kings is now your league leader with a +35 rating, followed by Sid the Kid and Alexander Ovechkin at +31. UPDATE : I just saw that the Colorado Avalanche have acquired Ruslan Salei from Florida. Congratulations, you just snagged the very worst Penalty Plus/Minus player in the entire NHL, at -30! I wonder if they plan on playing Forsberg on the penalty kill... Remember to consult this list before making that final pitch for that player you're seeking to obtain, so as to adjust your offer accordingly. You can go with something like this: "Yeah, I can see why you're offering up Bobby Holik, but how's he going to help me defensively when he's got a -17 Penalty Plus/Minus? I'm going to have to pick up an extra penalty ki...

It's time once again to review the NHL's Penalty Plus/Minus leaders, as I've refreshed the data up through the games of Sunday, December 3rd. Alex Ovechkin continues to lead with a +20 mark, followed by Sidney Crosby at +17 and Pavel Datsyuk with +14. Again, we see big-name talent leading the way here, as expected. All of these players give opposing defenses fits, so it's no surprise to see them getting hauled down more than other players. On the opposite end of things, we see the lower part of the rankings dominated by defensemen, whose job it is to prevent scoring chances, and thus are sometimes forced into taking penalties when beaten by an incoming forward. In fact, 11 out of the 12 spots at the bottom of this list are defensemen. The rarity here is to find defensemen who are drawing a significant number of penalties more than they commit; that list is led by Calgary's Dion Phaneuf, Nashville's Dan Hamhuis, and the Islanders' Chris Campoli, who are...

It's been a couple weeks, so the Penalty Plus/Minus numbers have been refreshed to capture the NHL games up through Sunday night, November 25. Alexander Ovechkin has taken the lead over Sidney Crosby, with a +18 to Sid's +15. We still see this list overwhelmingly dominated by big-name talent, as opposed to energetic grinders. Perhaps one way to use this new metric is to provide another factor for the Hart Trophy debate; after all, if you're focusing on the top players in the league in order to figure out who should be the MVP, you might start with the current scoring leaders: NHL Scoring leaders as of Nov. 26, 200 POS Player TM GP G A PTS +/- C Vincent Lecavalier TAM 23 16 22 38 10 C Sidney Crosby PIT 23 12 21 33 3 LW Ilya Kovalchuk ATL 23 19 14 33 4 LW Henrik Zetterberg DET 23 16 16 32 10 Convincing arguments could go in any number of directions from here. Lecavalier is our leading scorer, but Sid's close behind and the reigning MVP. Kovalchuk is leading a resurgent p...

After a wild and wooly NHL weekend, there's much to cover, so I'll provide a number of items for you this morning. 1. I've updated the Penalty information over at the Google Spreadsheet , and in an effort to find the most useful and practical presentation, I've put the following columns out there: Player, Penalties Drawn, Penalties Committed, Penalty +/-, Position, and Team. This allows you to zero in on your favorite team, and also draw comparisons based on player position. My hunch is that defensemen will fare poorly here relative to forwards, due to the nature of their work; they're trying to prevent goals, and have to hook, hold or trip more often than the zoomers up front. For those not able to access the spreadsheet, I've included the best and worst players in this measure at the bottom of this post. 2. I took my oldest son (5) to his first NHL game on Saturday, as we watched the Predators defeat the Blue Jackets in a shootout. K...

Welcome to all the visitors stopping by today via the Hockey News , and thanks to Rand Simon for his kind words. His note that some of the stuff I'm doing this season related to his arbitration work for Sean Avery over the summer is just the sort of thing I was hoping would be picked up on, the fact that statistical analysis can help answer some interesting questions related to team and individual performance in the NHL. From Simon's blog at the Hockey News today: Through analyzing shift charts and box scores we were able to determine that Avery was a "plus" in the penalty department last season as he drew more power plays than his penalties caused shorthanded situations. The statistic helped counteract the Rangers' argument that Avery was an undisciplined player who was hurting his team by taking too many penalties. I've been tracking Penalties Drawn so far this year, and while Sean Avery has missed most of the early action he's a player that I plan on ...

If you're wondering who's drawing the most penalties in the NHL , I've performed the weekly update over at the publicly available Google spreadsheet. Currently Sidney Crosby leads the way with 12, and then we have a five-way tie between Alexander Ovechkin, Joe Thornton, Scott Gomez, Mike Cammelleri, and Anze Kopitar, who have each drawn 11 penalties this season. I've added a few columns to the spreadsheet, including Games Played, Average Time on Ice, and Position, for those of you who were wondering about such things. NOTE - There's currently a formatting issue with any player averaging over 24 minutes per game, and I'm hoping to fix that by next week. Dion Phaneuf, for example, shows as having an average ice time of 3:31, rather than 27:31. WEEKEND NOTES I missed Saturday night's thriller between the Predators and Panthers, as I took my wife to the Grand Ole Opry, something she'd wanted to do since we moved to Nashville two yea...

When trying to judge the contribution of defensemen towards the success of their team, offensive statistics can be useful for one side of the story, but when it comes to their ability to prevent goals, the primary tool available is the plus/minus stat, which takes a basic stab at measuring the goals for/against ratio when a given player is on the ice in most situations. In particular, if a team is shorthanded and a goal is scored against them, plus/minus isn't affected. Combine that with the fact that plus/minus is largely affected by the other players on the ice, and you have a pretty limited measurement to work with. One way to shed a little more light on the play of defensemen is to examine how many minor penalties they take relative to their ice time. For example, if two stalwarts play twenty a minutes a game, but one takes twice as many minor penalties (leaving his teammates shorthanded) as the other, surely the player who commits fewer fouls is a greater help to his team, all...

The NHL playoffs are now well underway, and while it's fun to focus on the bad blood, highlight-reel plays and innumerable predictions (including some of my own) which quickly go awry, I thought it's worth taking a moment to reflect on some of the outstanding achievements of the NHL regular season, before it slips all too quickly from our collective attention span. Yes, I'm talking about the leading penalty takers from around the NHL. Back in November I looked at the leaders in various categories from 2005-06, and now it's time to hand out this season's awards, and since we're only a month removed from the film industry's Academy Awards, we'll hand them out Oscar-style ... OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN BOARDING : The nominees are... Steve Bernier, San Jose Sharks (4) Jonathan Cheechoo, San Jose Sharks (4) Ryan Hollweg, NY Rangers (4) And the winner is... Steve Bernier! No, this isn't a case of "it takes one to know one", but amongst ...

Take a hike over to the Globe & Mail and read Alan Ryder's latest article on the cost of penalties... it's well worth Two Minutes.

There I was, idly clicking my way around the hockey blogosphere, when, like the Bat Signal cast against the cloudy skies of Gotham, I spied a call for help. At the end of a post covering the All-Star Game and how perhaps it might be improved, Ritch from American Hockey Fan had a question... Why not have the best Powerplay in the league face off against the best PK? Who would that be, I wonder? San Jose vs. Montreal, maybe? Perhaps the Forechecker will come to my aid again. Fear not, good netizen - I'm always in need of topical inspiration, so let's take a look... The NHL stat in this area merely covers percentage of opportunities converted. On that front, San Jose has the top power play (25.8%), and Vancouver the top penalty kill (88.4%). There, we have our answer, right? If we did, this would be an awfully short piece, that's for sure. A great source of special teams statistics can be found over at mc79hockey.com , where you can find a breakdown of teams on a 60-minute ba...