Post-Game Talk: Everyone exhale … for now

[LTIR]

So who was waisting all the other minutes?

No one really.. maybe Kulak and Yama but that was not the point. Point was that both of these put up good numbers despite low TOI.

 

[LTIR]

Korpisalo is the best player on either team right now with Drai being very close and no one else even close to either of those two.

Pretty sure between both games the Oilers have out-chanced the Kings at least 2:1. Skinner is playing well considering the circumstances so it's not a knock at him at all.

Do not agree.
Draisaitl has been the best player hands down. He should've been given a 4th point on Kostin's goal making him part of pretty much all of Edmonton's production in the two games.

Korpisalo is tested more for sure but hasn't been that great. The gap between Drai and Korpi is larger than the gap between Korpi and guys like Nurse, Kempe and Doughty in my opinion.

 

[Fourier]

I ref hockey and have for many years. I don't care about the score, the teams, the players, the stats....just calling to the best of my ability. The rest is just noise. You believe a ref says..."Hey, it's 2-0 Edmonton. I need to shift how I ref." I am not in other ref's heads but I would say unlikely. Very unlikely.

Unlike some common myths game management has a fairly well established scientific basis. There have been multiple studies that have shown that there is and has been significant game management predicated on various circumstances. Early studies in other sports referenced the "home crowd" advantage. This is also something that can be a factor in the NHL. The paper below looks at the "even-up" phenomenon.

Biased Impartiality Among National Hockey League Referees

This paper builds an economic model of referee behavior in the National Hockey League using period-specific in-game data. Recognizing that referees are influenc

papers.ssrn.com

One of the key points here is that bias need not come from a desire to specifically help a particular team over another but because of a "perceived desire to be fair". This bias is often subconscious. But not always as Tim Peel clearly shows.

This next paper looks at other reasons for bias in regards to penalties. In particular, the chances that the leading team will get the next penalty.

Two of the primary observations in this paper are that (1) teams that have taken more penalties in a match are less likely to have the next penalty called against them and (2) teams that are leading in a match are more likely to have the next penalty called against them (also noted by Abrevaya and McCulloch (2014)).

https://www.sfu.ca/~tswartz/papers/penalty.pdf

They do say that it is possible that some of this is explained by changing behavior of teams but they feel this is unlikely to account for all of the discrepancies.

(Note: I can't post Abrevaya and McCulloch (2014)). Since it is behind a pay wall. I have access through my institution but would not post it here. From their abstract:

Statistical modeling reveals that the identity of the next team to be penalized also depends on a variety of other factors, including the score, the time in the game, the time since last penalty, which team is at home, and whether one or two referees are calling the game.

Reversal of fortune: a statistical analysis of penalty calls in the National Hockey League

This paper analyzes a unique data set consisting of all penalty calls in the National Hockey League between the 1995–1996 and 2001–2002 seasons. The primary finding is the prevalence of “reverse calls:” if previous penalties have been on one team, then the next penalty is more likely to be on...

www.degruyter.com

In the case of the Oilers it could easily be the case that the referees are hyper aware of the exceptional effectiveness of their pp leading to another form of "perceived desire to be fair" and even unconscious bias. It is entirely conceivable that the refs are resistant to awarding the Oilers with pp's on any even slightly marginal circumstance to avoid giving them an added advantage.

It is easy to dismiss "game management" as an excuse. But even though the Oilers have been more undisciplined the discrepancy in penalty minutes is extreme. The Oilers have had 3:20 of 5 vs 4 pp time to 15:50 for the Kings. And this is despite the fact that they have been by far the more dominant team and the sort of aggressiveness they are showing tends to result in more pp opportunities over the course of a game. Moreover, the pp's the Oilers have had have all been very early.

 

[HallOfGreatness4]

We are cursed