During the off-season, the always progressive NHL Board of Governors instituted a slew(foot) of rule changes for the 2017-2018 season with the hopes of cutting down on stick infractions and increasing the game’s overall pace of play.
The NHL’s slashing initiative began in earnest during the preseason but resulted in so many penalties being called that the league brass ordered its referees to curb their whistle-blowing enthusiasm.
This abrupt lurch-and-stop of officiating standards has led to uneven, choppy play across the NHL over the first 160 games of the regular season, with most teams alternating between the roles of beneficiary and victim.
The larger question, however, is whether these changes have altered the basic chemistry of how the league’s games play out and if the threat of penalties have directly impacted the outcome of contests on a regular basis.
Sportsnet’s Rory Boylen provided an early breakdown of the 2017 season, noting that while total penalties were trending up relative to the past four seasons, the increase pales to the number of infractions called during the 2005-2006 campaign (the year after the NHL’s year-long lockout).
Comparing the NHL’s first 80 games in 2016 to the first 80 of 2017 yields a few surprises:
- League scoring is actually DOWN in 2017, with 495 goals tallied through 80 games in 2016 versus just 464 in 2017.
- The total number of power-play opportunities in 2017 (note: includes partial power-plays) have only increased by 66, bumping from 582 to 648.
- Shots on goal have spiked from 4,756 last fall to 5,153 as of today (October 17th).
The changes haven’t slowed the offensive roll of the Pittsburgh Penguins much, as they’ve netted eight more goals than their 2016 iteration while converting at a 7% higher clip with the man-advantage.
While the tandem of Matt Murray & Antti Niemi currently own the Pole Position for the Anti-William M. Jennings Trophy (or shall I say, the Antti?) with a league-high 25 goals allowed, 10 of them came in the “Hey, Let’s Play All-Star Game Defense!” monstrosity that was the Blackhawks’ 10-1 drubbing of the Pens.
With several more statistical outliers littering the league landscape, assessing the impact of the NHL’s new rules set will require a much larger pool of games.
The true test of the changes will be whether special-teams dependent squads like the Philadelphia Flyers are able to harangue their PP opportunities into wins, thus affecting the standings as well as their power-play numbers.
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