We
recently celebrated Hockey Day in Canada and Hockey Weekend Across
America. The primetime telecast in
Canada on Saturday, February 9th featured several 3rd period
brawls between Toronto and Montreal.
That game gave me the motivation to update my theory on the correlation
of fights per game and Rat PIM. I
thought that I would review a small sample of games involving the top teams in
fight majors this season and see how they are doing in their honourable
campaign to make the game safer.
My
original post on Rat PIM showed a pretty strong link between fights per game
and Rat PIM (total of the following types of penalties; Roughing, Slashing, Cross
Checking, Major Penalties excluding fighting majors, Boarding and Unsportsmanlike). I received some tweets and emails, along with
a few comments on the post, that suggested I drill down and provide detail on
Rat PIM for and against. I think some of
my readers have mistaken me for some fancy-stats person that drools over
spreadsheets between posting pictures of cats on the internet. Not that there is anything wrong with that….
While I
don’t have the mental capacity or patience for the in-depth study they are
suggesting, I thought that looking at some highlights of 10 games over the past
two weeks would provide a snapshot of data.
Hopefully with enough of these types of updates we can pick out some
trends that may shed more light on the impact of enforcers and Rat PIM.
Game Samples
Here is
a summary of 5 games played on Hockey Day in Canada, February 9th.
Montreal
and Toronto are both among the leaders in fighting and managed to pile up the
Rat PIM in their game. You could assume
that the enforcers were out early trying to police the game and keep the Rats
in line….but that would be incorrect.
Montreal had the majority of their Rat PIM in the first two periods
while Toronto got out of line in the 3rd. There were 3 brawls, all in the 3rd
period, started by Prust from Montreal.
There was no apparent reason for Prust to fight Fraser other than
frustration because his team was down by 4 goals.
The
rest of the games were uneventful with no clear link between fighting and Rat
PIM. The only game that would be noteworthy
would be Carolina, not known for fighting, being assessed a fairly high number
of Rat PIM (5 minute boarding major and roughing). Their opponent, Philadelphia, who is
certainly no stranger to fighting didn’t do a very good job of keeping that
game clean.
Here is
a summary of 5 games played on Saturday, February 16th, part of
Hockey Weekend Across America.
A
fairly quiet night with only 1 fight among the 5 games reviewed, and no
surprise that it was in the Columbus game. Even more surprising was the lack of fighting
in the Montreal – Philadelphia match. Perhaps
just the threat of enforcement kept everyone in line. In all of the sample games the Rat PIMs were
assessed to the teams that all embrace the enforcer role; Columbus, Toronto and
Colorado.
League
Report – Fights/Game & Rat PIM
The
chart below provides a visual update on the Rat PIM for the current season, as
of February 18th. Full
details for each team are included at the end of this post.
At this
point in the season the correlation between fights per game and Rat PIM is not
as clear cut as the last 4 years of data presented previously. There is a subtle trend showing that Rat PIM are
lower as teams fight less but there are anomalies that need to be looked at
more closely. Vancouver, among the
league leaders in fights, has a Rat PIM total that is lower than 12 other
teams. Perhaps they have very disciplined enforcers. Pittsburgh, who is in the lower half of
fights/game, leads all teams in Rat PIM primarily because of high totals in
slashing, cross checking and boarding.
I’ll
update this chart occasionally throughout this short season and try to drill
down into some of the anomalies. For now
the link between fights and Rat-type penalties remains pretty strong - the more teams fight, the more Rat PIM they are assessed. Dressing an enforcer means putting a less
disciplined player on the ice who is taking penalties or their teammates
suddenly feel emboldened and play with more of an edge. It’s pretty obvious that the threat of a
fight is not making the game cleaner.
Rat PIM Detailed Stats
No comments:
Post a Comment