Whistle-happy officials chasing down Hurricanes

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Over the last three seasons, the Colorado Avalanche (+178 goals) and Carolina Hurricanes (+131 goals) have distinguished themselves as the league’s preeminent franchises. They both lead their respective conferences in goal differential by a considerable margin and, once again, are favourites for the Stanley Cup.

They both play with relentless pace. They dominate the puck. They are as deep and skilled as any team you can find in the league. And yet, one data point differentiates them in an extraordinary way.

That data point? Penalties.

In what’s becoming an increasingly perplexing trend, the Colorado Avalanche and Carolina Hurricanes have realized extreme divergence in penalty behaviour. It’s particularly odd because the NHL hasn’t been shy about how they call penalties, and that’s to follow an extreme balancing strategy. Rather than call the rulebook as intended, the league prefers to ensure teams earn relatively similar amounts of power-play opportunities over the course of a game (and, by extension, a season). It’s why you see very few teams with outlier seasons; it’s also why you see teams that draw more penalties take more penalties (like the Montreal Canadiens), and teams that draw fewer penalties take fewer penalties (like the Toronto Maple Leafs).

Let’s bring this back to Colorado and Carolina. The chart below shows a three-year tally of penalties drawn and taken, all situations. I’m going to bring in a third team – the Arizona Coyotes, who have distinctly been out-possessed, out-shot, and out-scored over this same time period – for benchmarking purposes. Here’s what the data says:

In one instance, you have a juggernaut Avalanche team that’s +96 in penalties, a juggernaut Hurricanes team that’s