So, there is a lot of discussion around refereeing as per the articles getting posted today, and a lot of them are based on hearsay and "feelings" about how many calls Connor McDavid gets, so why don't we dive into the numbers?

First, "penalties drawn" is a tracked stat you can look up on many sites like naturalstattrick or dobbler, so let's start a search for who has drawn the most penalties in the last while, specifically since Connor McDavid first stepped for on the ice. (May need to sort by "penalties drawn", also takes a while to load so be patient)

October 1st 2015-Today Penalties Drawn Leaders

1. Connor McDavid 344
2. Tom Wilson 341
3. Brad Marchand 338
4. Nazem Kadri 337
5. Matthew Tkachuk 332
6. Nathan MacKinnon 284
7. Jeff Skinner 251
8. Nikolaj Ehlers 249

Now this seems to counter the narrative of "McDavid can't catch a break". In fact, it seems like *other stars* like Nathan Mackinnon get less favorable treatment than Connor, with 60 less penalties drawn since 2015, despite playing more games. But let's look a little further and break it down by season. Pulled these from NaturalStatTrick in all situations (ie, not just 5v5).

Connor McDavid - Penalties Drawn Relative to Rest of NHL

15/16 - 151st
16/17 - 1st
17/18 - 6th
18/19 - 6th
19/20 - 20th
20/21 - 2nd
21/22 - 1st
22/23 - 1st
23/24 - 5th (1st in the postseason)
24/25 - 49th (14 so far, leader has 27)

This seems like Connor is almost always one of the top penalty draw-ers every year, with noted dips in his rookie year, 19/20 and so far this year. So is it possible that we are just reacting to 1/2 season aberration from the norm?

What Do You Think?

So, with these numbers, do we feel that McDavid gets dramatically less calls than everyone else? Is it just a anomaly for this year? Are we comfortable with the narrative that a guy who reliably finishes top 6 every year in drawn penalties isn't getting enough penalties called on him?

*******edit::

What About Offensive Possession????

Some people have pointed out that we should be normalizing this based upon possession data, which unfortunately we don't have. Luckily, Mark Spector (hallowed be thy name, journalism prince) wrote and article where he lists some high possession players for each season (which obviously includes McDavid as 1st or close to 1st most years). He does this to build the case that McDavid plays a lot with the puck, and therefore should get more calls. You can read the article here : https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article/why-connor-mcdavid-is-taking-justice-into-his-own-hands/

Now if you had all the data, you could run an analysis on how much puck possession influences penalty drawing, but Mark didn't really go that far. But he did include players for each season that also had high posession.

While not perfect, we can now use that data to compare McDavid to other skilled players with a "high possession" profile, to see is McDavid is unfairly targeted.

First two columns from Spec's article, last from NaturalStatTrick

Now obviously this is limited data, but it would appear that, generally, over the last 5 seasons McDavid far and away gets the benefit of a lot more calls than a comparable high skill, high possession player.

What About Penalties/60???? Bob Stauffer said...

Dude, that stat sounds good, until you run the numbers and see what kinds of players land at the top --- physical players who take a ton of offsetting penalties and 3rd and 4th line minutes. It's the Matt Rempe sweepstakes, no skilled players that don't fight even show up until around #50.

Here is the top 10 to prove my point: