Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Drawing penalties while on the penalty kill

While yesterday's post looked at teams and players that take penalties on the power play, thus killing their momentum, today's post is a look into teams that get themselves out of trouble by drawing calls against the opposition while short-handed.

There is obviously some luck involved in this, but getting the other guy to do something stupid does require some amount of skill. You could also call it poor sportsmanship or cheating (which is what we all call it when we see the other team do it to our favorite).

Here are the top 10 teams at drawing the call to even things up:
Team#
Lightning36
Penguins34
Blue Jackets32
Canucks31
Maple Leafs28
Coyotes28
Hurricanes27
Rangers27
Kings27
Sharks27

Here are the 9 players that have drawn 6 or more calls:
Player#
Dustin Brown12
Ryan Kesler8
Brandon Backes7
Chris Kelly7
Vernon Fiddler7
Mike Smith6
Kyle Cumiskey6
Jordan Staal6
Marek Zidlicky6

A few notes (again):
  • Mike Smith was the top goalie, somehow drawing 6 calls, including a double-minor from Chris Neil. If I'm the goalie, I'm not sure I want to mess with Neil.
  • Kyle Cumiskey pulled the trick twice in the same game (in the same period), against top penalty taker Aucoin (per yesterday's chart) and Lombardi in a game against Phoenix.
  • Dustin Brown is pretty good at this.

2 comments:

ppirilla said...

Now you've got me curious. How do these numbers compare to team powerplay and penalty kill rankings? Is there anything useful to find in the difference between these two statistics?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Pat said...

That's a good question!

I think after the free agency day, when I post this over at Hockey Independent, I'll revise it a bit to see if there's any link to overall PP or PK success rates.

I'll make sure to throw up a note on this blog with a link when that happens...