Faceoff Domination

Over at Hockey Independent, I put up an article dealing with the top 20 faceoff beatdowns in 2009-2010. Go on over and have a read.

Penalties: Part 2 - Hooking and Intereference

So last time, the big news was that hooking and interference were down by 27% from the second period to the third period in the 2009-10 NHL regular season.

In this post, we'll take a look at some of the refs who appear to be responsible for this sharp inconsistency.

First off, a few general numbers:

• Hooking and Interference were #1 and #4 on the overall list of penalties called (excluding Fighting, which isn't called at the discretion of the referee).
• H&I (Hooking and Interference) dropped by 27% from the second to the third period.
• All other calls (excluding Fighting) dropped by just 8% combined.

Why would this be the case? Is it consistent across all of the refs?

I can answer the second question pretty clearly.

First, a quick note about these numbers - there are two referees at each game and the NHL does not identify which referee made the call (or, at least, they don't publish it). That means the best we can do is "associate" each ref with the penalties that were called while they were on the ice. Despite the lack of individual accountability, I think the results are still interesting.

Given that the average drop is 27.49% (which is way too high in my mind), we'd expect to see some guys on each end of the spectrum.

In the charts below, the numbers for each period are the number of Hooking and Interference calls made in games worked by the ref. The % Change shows the percentage difference between the second and third period.

Here are the more consistent refs:

Referee	First	Second	Third	OT	% Change
#18 Greg Kimmerly	48	37	43	2	16.22%
#41 Chris Ciamaga	19	19	20		5.26%
#5 Chris Rooney	59	54	52	1	-3.70%
#9 Dan O'Rourke	52	64	59	1	-7.81%
#43 Brian Pochmara	54	72	65	2	-9.72%
#13 Dan O'Halloran	51	57	51		-10.53%
#11 Kelly Sutherland	56	53	47	2	-11.32%
#20 Tim Peel	57	57	49	3	-14.04%
#28 Chris Lee	58	60	51		-15.00%
#32 Tom Kowal	52	68	57	2	-16.18%
#3 Mike Leggo	57	51	42	2	-17.65%
#27 Eric Furlatt	82	72	58	1	-19.44%

The actual number of calls isn't very useful here since I haven't shown the number of games worked by each ref. The thing you can count on, however, is that if one of these guys is wearing the stripes, you're more likely to see H&I called in the third.

Here is the other end of the ref pool. These fellows have what I consider to be truly frightening numbers because they are wildly inconsistent between the second and third period for H&I:

Referee	First	Second	Third	OT	% Change
#45 Justin StPierre	81	89	40	2	-55.06%
#44 David Banfield	17	27	14	1	-48.15%
#25 Marc Joannette	42	66	35	1	-46.97%
#15 Stephane Auger	90	85	47	2	-44.71%
#48 Frederick L'Ecuyer	36	34	19	1	-44.12%
#7 Bill McCreary	63	60	34	2	-43.33%
#6 Dan Marouelli	37	44	26	1	-40.91%
#38 Francois StLaurent	58	80	48		-40.00%
#26 Rob Martell	63	58	35	2	-39.66%
#23 Brad Watson	68	73	45	1	-38.36%
#14 Dennis LaRue	57	60	38		-36.67%
#10 Paul Devorski	44	71	47	1	-33.80%

You have to wonder what some of these guys are thinking sometimes. StPierre, Auger, McCreary, Martell, Watson and LaRue are pretty consistent through the first two periods and then largely put the whistles away for the third.

You have to think the NHL has these numbers. You also have to think they're aware of the tendencies of these guys. Heck, they probably know (unlike us) which ref actually made the call, which would make this case even more strongly.

The problem with these numbers is that the players don't know what to expect from one night to the next. They get one night with a Kimmerly or a Rooney and the calls are pretty consistent across the entire game, and then you get an Auger or StPierre and the third period deteriorates into clutch and grab hockey.

Pretty interesting, I think. Thoughts on this?

This will be cross-posted to Hockey Independent (albeit in a summarized fashion with Part 1) later in the week (maybe later tonight if I can get my act together).

Penalties: Part 1

This is the first part in a series on penalties in the NHL. The data comes from various sources on the web, much of it from NHL.com in their play-by-play reports on each game.

In the 2009-2010 season, there were 12328 penalties called, which works out to about 10 per game (as there are 1230 games in each regular season).

The breakdown by period is:

• First period: 4062
• Second period: 4420
• Third period: 3745
• Overtime: 101

So, right off the bat, it looks as though the "they put away the whistles in the third" idea has some merit. We'll take a closer look at that later in the this post, and later in the series when we look at individual referee data.

The top 10 penalties called in 2009-2010 were:

Penalty	Calls
Hooking	1750
Roughing	1502
Fighting	1423
Tripping	1412
Interference	1065
Holding	953
Slashing	783
Hi-sticking	747
Cross checking	483
Boarding	310

Some notables that are missing from the top 10 include: Delay of game (puck over glass), Too many men, Goaltender interference, Holding the stick and the bloody version of Hi-sticking.

All told, there were 50 distinct types of penalties called in 2009-2010 (I was surprised how many different ones there were). Here are a few that were almost never called:

• Spearing was called 3 times, and one additional time as a double minor.
• Abusive Language - Bench was called twice
• Just one Illegal Stick penalty, on Brett Carson of the Hurricanes at 18:41 of the third period in a 5-1 blowout over the Rangers. Not sure the point of that one was...

Now let's take a look at the most commonly called penalties, broken out by period (I combined both the regular and double minor versions of Hi-sticking):

	Period
Penalty	1	2	3	OT	Total
Boarding	94	109	104	3	310
Cross checking	147	172	160	4	483
Delaying Game-Puck over glass	91	94	106	1	292
Fighting	674	454	295		1423
Hi-sticking	257	277	298	12	747
Holding	293	353	300	7	953
Holding the stick	54	67	42		163
Hooking	594	661	480	15	1750
Interference	376	394	287	8	1065
Interference on goalkeeper	67	85	79	2	233
Roughing	440	541	512	9	1502
Slashing	210	303	261	9	783
Too many men/ice - bench	74	104	60	3	241
Tripping	433	538	421	20	1412

We already saw previously that calls from the second period to the third period dropped from 4420 to 3745, a 15% drop. Most of these are judgement calls on the part of the refs. You can see they are pretty consistent on many of them - Roughing, Too many men, Boarding, Cross checking, Hi-sticking, Slashing, etc.

Take a second look at three calls that have a definitive impact on the speed and flow of the game - here they are with the drop from the second to the third period:

• Hooking - dropped by 27%
• Interference - dropped by 27%
• Tripping - dropped by 22%

I'm willing to let Tripping drop - it's essentially flat with the first period, so I could argue that the long change has something to do with that.

Hooking and Interference calls, however are way down from the first period numbers too. You can't tell me that it's not happening as much in the third period - I don't buy it. I think the refs are exercising their "judgement" (such as it is) instead of calling what they see on these penalties.

Any thoughts on the analysis?

Sidney Crosby and Faceoffs: Part 3

So for the last part, I thought I'd take a look at which players Sid had the most success against (or lack thereof).

With the linesman, we couldn't be certain who had dropped the puck, so we couldn't say for sure what the actual success rate was. With the players, it's obviously very specific and certain.

These numbers speak for themselves. I'm not showing anyone he faced less than 10 times, because I think the sample size is too small. That leaves us with 58 players Sid faces 10 times or more in 2009-2010.

Here are the top 10 guys that Sid dominated in the faceoff circle:

Player	Wins	Losses	Total	Win %
23 DRURY	29	7	36	80.56%
17 CARTER	16	4	20	80.00%
19 CONNOLLY	12	4	16	75.00%
26 CHRISTENSEN	8	3	11	72.73%
19 THORNTON	8	3	11	72.73%
91 STAMKOS	13	5	18	72.22%
27 REINPRECHT	14	6	20	70.00%
47 PEVERLEY	14	6	20	70.00%
9 WEISS	23	10	33	69.70%
11 BETTS	18	8	26	69.23%

Poor Chris Drury - he really had a hard time against Sid this season. Jeff Carter isn't far behind (just for reference, Sid was 33-21 against Mike Richards too).

And on the other end of the spectrum:

Player	Wins	Losses	Total	Win %
9 MORRISON	3	9	12	25.00%
42 ANISIMOV	5	12	17	29.41%
28 GAUSTAD	8	18	26	30.77%
91 GOMEZ	5	10	15	33.33%
37 BERGERON	17	28	45	37.78%
50 VERMETTE	4	6	10	40.00%
46 KREJCI	7	10	17	41.18%
14 PLEKANEC	12	17	29	41.38%
23 SLATER	5	7	12	41.67%
9 ROY	5	7	12	41.67%

Gaustad, Bergeron and Plekanec were easily his toughest challenges all year, because he faced them with regularity and wasn't terribly good against them. I don't have time to do it now, but it would be interesting to know if he struggles against right-handed players more than left...

Sidney Crosby and Faceoffs: Part 2

This part will take a look at how Sid fared with games worked by specific linesman.

I always wondered if the way the linesman drops the puck has anything to do with who wins the faceoff. Maybe there was a pattern that some guys could pick up on and use to their advantage. Maybe some linesman allow some guys to cheat more and gain an advantage.

Despite the fact that we're talking about a very small percentage difference between average (50%) and very good (Sid won about 56%), the sheer volume of draws makes any small advantage significant. Sid took almost 1800 draws. The difference of a percentage point would be 18 more wins, so for Sid, he won 108 draws more than average. Since the Pens play a puck possession style, that number is significant.

So, in looking at the linesman, there is no way to identify who is dropping the puck. There are two linesman working each game and the data doesn't specific who drops each puck.

What we can do, however, is to "associate" the linesman with the faceoffs, so that in games worked by Marc Pare, we know that Sid has a specific success rate (53.7%).

Here are the top 10 linesmen Sid was most successful against:

Linesman	Total #	Win %
#97 Jean Morin	107	66.36%
#70 Derek Nansen	70	62.86%
#47 Dan Schachte	53	62.26%
#68 Scott Driscoll	93	61.29%
#59 Steve Barton	85	61.18%
#75 Derek Amell	231	58.87%
#50 Scott Cherrey	89	58.43%
#57 Jay Sharrers	86	58.14%
#66 Darren Gibbs	43	58.14%
#96 David Brisebois	156	57.69%

If any of these guys are announced as the linesman for a game, Sid is likely to have a good night.

On the flip side, here are the guys he has the least success against:

Linesman	Total #	Win %
#73 Vaughan Rody	62	46.77%
#88 Mike Cvik	49	48.98%
#55 Shane Heyer	42	50.00%
#54 Greg Devorski	159	50.31%
#90 Andy McElman	129	50.39%
#77 Tim Nowak	68	51.47%
#65 Pierre Racicot	33	51.52%
#92 Mark Shewchyk	64	51.56%
#61 Lyle Seitz	44	52.27%
#86 Brad Lazarowich	17	52.94%

You only really need to worry about linesman he faced more than 100 times on this list. I'd say the other numbers are insignificant due to small data size.

The last piece of information I tried to get is how many times Sid was kicked out of the faceoff. This data is not recorded anywhere, but I looked at any faceoff where Sid was on the ice but did not take the draw. I think in those situations, it is normally safe to assume that he had been kicked out of the draw.

According to that methodology, Sid was kicked out 63 times during the 2009-2010 season. Here are the top 5 guys that kicked him out of the draw:

Linesman	Faceoffs	Waved Out%	Win %
#66 Darren Gibbs	43	8.51%	58.14%
#57 Jay Sharrers	86	7.53%	58.14%
#79 Mark Pare	149	7.45%	53.69%
#71 Brad Kovachik	148	6.92%	56.76%
#78 Brian Mach	179	6.77%	57.54%

You can see it didn't appear to have any impact on the win % as Sid was above his season average on all but one of those guys.

On the other end of things, Sid was waved out a grand total of once all year against these five guys (though the volume is low)

Linesman	Faceoffs	Waved Out%	Win %
#47 Dan Schachte	53	0.00%	62.26%
#68 Scott Driscoll	93	0.00%	61.29%
#61 Lyle Seitz	44	0.00%	52.27%
#65 Pierre Racicot	33	0.00%	51.52%
#96 David Brisebois	156	0.64%	57.69%

I think the Driscoll number is significant. Sid is well above average against him with a decent number of faceoffs.