Officiating Review – Game 1 Sharks vs Kings

Previously I had introduced the idea of my officiating review, laying out my methodology and the reasons behind delving into this masochistic pastime.

Today, as a way to introduce the system I’m going to be running, and to present some topical playoff content, I’ll begin with the data I have collected on the San Jose Sharks/Los Angeles Kings first round playoff series.

I’m going to restate that this exercise isn’t meant to paint all referees in a bad light. My purpose is to try and look objectively at the officiating and see what things can be determined from that data. Call,ing an NHL game is extraordinarily difficult and I in no way begrudge an official any missed calls. That being said, what I am hoping to determine is whether there exists any proof of inconsistencies or bias in their work.

So let’s start by talking about what we expect from NHL officials.

I think at the top of the list we would expect them to call a fair and even game, to enforce the rules and to avoid bias and favoritism.

Now if we take the method I’m using, reviewing games and recording all penalty infractions, both called and uncalled (missed), determining their nature (physical or technical) and severity (0 = phantom, 1 = marginal, 2 = deserving of penalty, 3 = blatant or obvious), and the player against whom the infraction was committed, and put it on a chart we would hope to see an even breakdown that saw teams punished at equivalent rates relative to how many rules they broke.

It would probably look like this:

The missed and called infractions are about even and both teams are penalized at equal rates for breaking the rules.

Even the game below could be said to be “fair” as the relationship between missed and called infractions appears to be keeping even and teams are being called at the same rate where committing a foul is as likely to be called, regardless of team.

So as we move along, keep an eye on a few items, specifically the relationship between the missed calls by the two teams, as this helps to illustrate the differences between their employed playing styles. Then building on that, check the rate of called penalties, this is the crux of what we will be investigating for the immediate future. That is to say, if Team A commits fouls at a rate of 2 to 1 compared to Team B, yet both receive identical numbers of penalties, we can say that the officiating appears to be either ignoring the infractions of Team A or, conversely, being overly strict in their handling of Team B.

At this point we need to look at the results from the first game in round 1 of the playoffs between San Jose and Los Angeles. I’m going to post my recorded data as well so that anyone interested can review it at their leisure. If you have any questions regarding the data don’t hesitate to ask either in the comments or on twitter @CodexRex. Please note that my PVR box cut out mid-way into the third period of game 1, so I was only able to review up until approximately the ten-minute mark of the third period.

As a way of trying to minimize the impact of any bias in the data I would record the marginal infractions but have avoided adding them into the charts below. I quickly found that the marginal infractions were often the first sign of an emotional attachment to the outcome of the game or as a response to the actions of one of the two teams. As one begins to take issue with the behavior or play of a team, one is more likely to nitpick the smaller infractions and to begin to look for little hooks and pick plays that are typically part of the larger game. The charts have been labelled to indicate that they include only the “fair” and “obvious” infractions. As well, in addition to providing an overall look at infractions, I have separated the data into technical and physical infractions, in order to further differentiate any possible officiating inconsistencies.

I would draw your attention first to the two portions representing the called penalties, they are identical at 6% of total events, or in this case specifically, 3 penalties per team.

Now we can weigh that against the remaining portions and it appears that the Kings committed the vast majority of uncalled infractions, by a 2 to 1 ratio essentially.

Now, if we are still under the assumption that our principle expectation for the officials is that they enforce the rules of the game evenly and justly, this result would suggest that one of two things was happening: A.) the Kings more fully exploited the officials’ leniency towards infractions or B.) that the Sharks are more strictly policed by the officials than their opposition because we cannot know with certainty that if they decided to commit more fouls against the Kings they would not have necessarily escaped punishment – essentially that they were playing the game with one hand tied behind their backs.

Again, I am not intending to use this exercise to cast aspersions on the referees, but rather looking at the information available to try and provide some objective perspectives.

Let’s look at the technical fouls.

Here the Sharks appear to be more willing to engage in questionable plays than in the previous, whole-game chart, and the ratios of infractions to penalties look closer to what we would expect from an even game.
Next is the physical infraction chart.

If you are a fan of any team that has faced the Los Angeles Kings you are likely to look at this for a moment and feel a strong emotional response. The Kings engaged in far more questionable to obvious physical fouls, specifically 6, so not a terribly compelling sample size, to the Sharks’ 2. That no penalties were assigned for any of the physical fouls including blatant cross-checking, boarding, roughing infractions.

As an aside, the most oft-inflicted player for the Sharks was Tommy Wingels, and for the Kings it was Trevor Lewis, neither of whom successfully drew a penalty in the game. There were twelve hooking and twelve tripping infractions, called or uncalled, in the game as this appears to have been the most commonly occurring type of foul.

This is the first game we’ve looked at in the Sharks/Kings series. I don’t want to make any sweeping statements until we’ve gone along a little further in the exercise, but it would be worthwhile to scan the list of infractions in order to get a sense of what kind of officiating and play the Oilers could find themselves up against when next they make the post-season.

In the next article I will be move along a little more quickly and we’ll examine games 2 and 3, now that we’ve established the basic ground rules. Again, I welcome any feedback, either in the comments section below or through twitter. Thanks for reading.