Sunday, August 12, 2007

The Referees - Part 4 - Home PIM Rankings

These are the rankings for all 37 NHL referees from 2006-2007 in PIM called on the home team. Remember that these minutes are not directly attributable to an individual ref. They do, in my opinion, indicate a trend when considered over 82 games (or 70-75, as is the case with most refs in the regular season). Listed below are the average number of minutes associated with each ref, and the change from their spot in the overall PIM rankings.

As you glance at the chart, here are some things that jump out at me:
  • If you are at the Igloo for a game and you see Rooney or LaRue as opposed to Devorski, McCauley or Leggo, you could reasonably expect there to be about three more minor penalties to be called on your team. That's quite a bit.
  • Anyone on this list that jumps seven or more spots would seem to be treating the home team differently than they do the road. Either that, or they did a bunch of games in a stadium where they home team takes a bunch of penalties. That's not terribly likely, because most refs don't visit a given arena more than two or three times in a season.
Anyway, without further ado, here's the chart. Tomorrow will see the similar thing for the road teams. After that, I want to look at the spread between the average home PIM and average road PIM.

Ref Home PIM
Change
Chris Rooney 16.93 3
Dennis LaRue 16.52 -
Mike Hasenfratz 15.93 5
Dave Jackson 15.9 (1)
Craig Spada 15.79 -
Steve Kozari 15.73 (5)
Chris Lee 15.56 (1)
Brad Meier 15.54 (1)
Brad Watson 15.42 -
Don Koharski 15.37 1
Ian Walsh 15.27 2
Francois St. Laurent 15.19 3
Eric Furlatt 15.15 5
Mick McGeough 14.99 3
Brian Pochmara 14.7 (5)
Don Van Massenhoven 14.55 3
Bill McCreary 14.34 9
Tom Kowal 14.3 (6)
Rob Shick 14.29 6
Dan O'Rourke 14.24 (4)
Gord Dwyer 14.15 (7)
Stephane Auger 13.86 1
Rob Martell 13.75 5
Justin St. Pierre 13.74 (3)
Dan Marouelli 13.66 4
Dean Warren 13.57 1
Dean Morton 13.44 6
Dan O'Halloran 13.42 (6)
Kevin Pollock 13.41 (9)
Kelly Sutherland 13.37 (6)
Marc Joannette 13.12 (1)
Kerry Fraser 13.07 (1)
Tim Peel 12.64 2
Greg Kimmerly 12.59 (2)
Paul Devorski 12.05 (1)
Mike Leggo 12.03 0
Wes McCauley 11.85 0

Here are the previous parts in the series:
Introduction
Part 1 - High PIM
Part 2 - Low PIM
Part 3 - Home / Road Intro

2 comments:

The Dark Ranger said...

You would think the league would be analyzing such stats on the refs and evaluating whether, or not, they should even be on the ice.

Great analysis...nice site.

The Dark Ranger
www.thedarkranger.com

Pat said...

Dark Ranger -

Thanks for the kind words.

I'm sure the NHL does evaluate these things. They probably even keep track of who calls the penalty, but they don't publish it. I'm not sure how much they act on it, but one of the things I plan to look at down the road is the historical data - I have box scores going back to 2001-2002, so we can see how the numbers changed for each guy over time.