Monday, March 26, 2007
Drawing Penalties
I've received a few questions about the "Penalties Drawn" statistics. Most people want to know why I record who's on the ice for the penalty as opposed to recording which individual drew the penalty.
Unfortunately, there are five or six teams that still don't record this information at home. Off the top of my head, I think Anaheim, Nashville, Boston and Florida don't, and I can't remember the others. So we're missing a big chunk of data, and we're forced to estimate the total number of penalties drawn by extrapolating from the road data. This wouldn't be a big problem if Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne weren't among the players whose penalty-drawing performance isn't properly reported.
So until all 30 teams record penalties drawn, I think we're better off crediting everyone who's on the ice. To me, it's obvious that Ovechkin and Kariya are responsible for their own high totals, and it's not a big deal that their defensemen also get credit. This is the same situation as +/-, where a D like Tom Preissing has a really high number that's quite obviously due to the offensive skills of other players. We know it's not Preissing - it's Alfredsson and Heatley. Same goes for drawing penalties.
Unfortunately, there are five or six teams that still don't record this information at home. Off the top of my head, I think Anaheim, Nashville, Boston and Florida don't, and I can't remember the others. So we're missing a big chunk of data, and we're forced to estimate the total number of penalties drawn by extrapolating from the road data. This wouldn't be a big problem if Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne weren't among the players whose penalty-drawing performance isn't properly reported.
So until all 30 teams record penalties drawn, I think we're better off crediting everyone who's on the ice. To me, it's obvious that Ovechkin and Kariya are responsible for their own high totals, and it's not a big deal that their defensemen also get credit. This is the same situation as +/-, where a D like Tom Preissing has a really high number that's quite obviously due to the offensive skills of other players. We know it's not Preissing - it's Alfredsson and Heatley. Same goes for drawing penalties.
Labels: penalties drawn
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