Diving Update.

I’ve said a bit about diving in the past. And as people posted they wanted to see how it played out through the season. In the first 500 games or so this season the NHL wanted to make a statement that they were cracking down on diving. Interestingly those statements have faded since November. The media appears to have gone silent and interestingly enough it appears there no more upper management pressure on referees to call these penalties. Avery got his third diving call (next requires a suspension) costing him 0.2% of his current income (I guess it’s the cost of being in his business), however there appears to be no news coverage on the fine he should’ve received. I’m curious if the NHL will give Avery the fourth to make a point or if they’re just bluffing about the suspension.

The point of this post however is just to show the interesting trend in diving calls over the season:

Games:	2005-2006	2006-2007
0-99	11	14
100-199	10	14
200-299	5	12
300-399	4	10
400-499	9	13
500-599	8	5
600-699	8	6

It’s interesting that the 2005-2006 had the same sort of diving calls occurring in games 200-399 as 2006-2007 is having in games 500-699. Now my database is missing 6 games from the 600-699 set, however 4 of those played today had no diving calls and it’s unlikely that the two games left played tomorrow will have a diving call.

In my opinion, I think there is probably one significant dive per game and probably twice that number of additional minor dives however the NHL seems to believe there is around one dive every ten games and even less when they’re not marketing the diving rules.