February 25, 2007

Canucks 2-1 OTL

So I didn't listen to the whole game and certainly didn't watch, but I found it strange that the Canuck's had 7 minor calls against, while Dallas had one (in the first minute). This meant 7 penalties against the Canucks in a row including a long 5-3 and penalty in overtime. So I was curious what is the worst ratio in the NHL for penalties against each team. The answer is 1:0, happened three times [1 2 3]. However these games had very few calls in total (worst was 4). The game this afternoon had a penalty ratio of 7:1. So a larger picture seemed necessary. I plotted home penalties vs. away penalties [only looking at minors - graph on the right]. Each dot is labeled with the gameid that the NHL uses; you can find the game summary by changing the # in this URL: http://www.nhl.com/scores/htmlreports/20062007/GS020936.HTM. The usual relationship can be seen: as away team gets more penalties the home team does as well. I can't say whether the officiating was fair or not in the Canucks game, but I can say it's a little strange. What's maybe most remarkable is that the Canucks were able to come away with a point.

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