The Referees - Part 5 - Road PIM Rankings

The road team takes less penalty minutes, in general, than the home team in the NHL, by about a minute per game. I'm not sure why that is, except that maybe the road team play more under control, while the home team allows emotion to get the better of them at home. It would be interesting to look at a team-by-team breakdown of PIM at home and on the road.

You'd expect that a referee would rank in roughly the same place (maybe +/- 5 spots) in their average PIM against the home team as against the road team. That's really not the case, as 17 of the 37 refs rise or drop 7 or more spots, with 9 guys changing 10 or more places. That's pretty significant, and I think, points to some guys not calling things evenly. However, given our stipulation about the inability to pin specific PIM to specific guys in the stripes, this is all just conjecture. I think the NHL wants it to be that way...

A few random thoughts, and then the rankings:

• The biggest thing to jump out at me is that only 4 refs call more than 15 minutes per game on the road team. When it comes to the home team, 13 refs average over 15 minutes per game.
• The bottom two guys in road PIM are the bottom two guys in home PIM (and PIM overall). Leggo and McCauley just don't seem to blow the whistle. By contrast, the top two guys in road PIM (Kozari and Jackson) are ranked #6 and #4 respectively in home PIM.

Here's the chart. It shows the ref, the average PIM they're associated with on the road, and the change in rank from the home PIM rankings.

Ref	Road PIM Avg	Home/Road Rank Diff
Steve Kozari	16.62	5
Dave Jackson	15.88	2
Dennis LaRue	15.46	-1
Tom Kowal	15.01	14
Brian Pochmara	14.9	10
Gord Dwyer	14.79	15
Chris Lee	14.64	0
Brad Meier	14.59	0
Craig Spada	14.45	-4
Dan O'Rourke	14.42	10
Chris Rooney	14.37	-10
Brad Watson	14.23	-3
Don Koharski	14.05	-3
Ian Walsh	13.74	-3
Mike Hasenfratz	13.73	-12
Mick McGeough	13.64	-2
Francois St. Laurent	13.63	-5
Kevin Pollock	13.41	11
Dan O'Halloran	13.36	9
Don Van Massenhoven	13.28	-4
Eric Furlatt	13.26	-8
Justin St. Pierre	13.07	2
Kelly Sutherland	13.04	7
Stephane Auger	12.81	-2
Dean Warren	12.63	1
Paul Devorski	12.58	9
Greg Kimmerly	12.48	7
Kerry Fraser	12.37	4
Marc Joannette	12.34	2
Rob Martell	12.15	-7
Rob Shick	11.99	-12
Dan Marouelli	11.93	-7
Bill McCreary	11.93	-16
Tim Peel	11.6	-1
Dean Morton	11.44	-8
Wes McCauley	11.23	1
Mike Leggo	11.2	-1

Here are the previous parts in the series:
Introduction
Part 1 - High PIM
Part 2 - Low PIM
Part 3 - Home / Road Intro
Part 4 - Home PIM Rankings

Next we'll take a look at the spread between road and home PIM at little more closely. Some of these guys are really jumping around, but what does that translate into in real PIM per game?