The worst part is opposing fans will swear up and down that Toronto gets help from the refs. Usually fans of teams that get far more favourable officiating but choose to blindly believe otherwise
mountzeus
Dare you to post this to r/hockey
VanAgain
Yeah, it’s weird. Otherwise pugnacious teams come to Toronto and treat our players with courtesy and respect.
IAmTheBredman
People will blame guys like kadri and bunting for “diving” and losing the benefit of the doubt with refs, but we clearly never had it to begin with. The talent we have, the puck possession we maintain, there’s no possible way we consistently see these numbers so consistently for powerplay time without some kind of bias happening.
And before people say the players are soft and don’t draw penalties, I’d like to point out how much the personnel has changed over those 7 years. There’s 1 dman, and 3 forwards that have remained since 2016.
Woodrovski
But refs favour the Leafs!
TangerineCold2174
I would love to see their rank in penalty kill time per season. Cause generally powerplay and penalty kill time are correlated for a team
gotfcgo
I want to see their PK time.
Then I want to see both for Boston.
HemiKooks
That’s entirely too consistent for it not to be suspicious at this point.
I’m telling you, officials are **terrified** to look, even the tiniest bit, bias towards the Leafs. So much so that they’re intent swings way into the negative side of the scale.
If they’re hard and unfavourable to TOR, no one cares — all is right in the world. If they look positively bias towards us? The entire league freaks out.
AustichMavarlander
Pathetic. Worst officiated league in pro-sports. Fuckin hate the NHL.. why does my fav team and sport have to be in this semi-pro bum ass league
akxCIom
But time on pp is mitigated by scoring on pp so that would have to be taken into account as well
[deleted]
[deleted]
HowieFeltersnitz
So what you’re saying is it all went down hill when Tavares came into town?
DDKLondon
Show that to Sutter.
Mother_Gazelle9876
NHL referees believe their job is to manage the game, not call all the infractions they see. The Leafs don’t take many penalties, so the refs don’t give them manys pp’s to make the game even
SyphiliticPlatypus
I have zero idea why the NHL is so utterly shit when it comes to upholding unbiased refereeing. It is plain to any fan – casual or long-time – to see that refereeing is completely broken and lacks nearly all objectivity.
Bettman is a sham. His literal job description is is being “charged with protecting the integrity of the game of professional hockey and preserving public confidence in the League.”
He has completely failed in this aspect. What job can I get that pays $9.6M to not do a single thing right?
I also wonder why the Board of Directors – who Bettman is responsible to – isn’t more active in this. Does Larry Tennenbaum really sit in those meetings and say, “Yeah, this league is demonstrably biased against my team, but evening out games helps the overall quality and excitement of the sport so whatevs.”
Maybe he does. Which means the only way things change is if fans have had enough and stop watching.
I’d say NHL viewing rights – that continues to black out games even for a paid service – is helping that already.
Massive fucking joke this league is.
stolpoz52
Cumulative (because I’m lazy)
Toronto is 29th in the league for PP TOI since 2016/17 (Seattle obviously 32, vegas also missing a season in there)
But Toronto is 26 in PK TOI in the same time period. These are correlated. It isn’t a bias against Toronto specifically, it is that Toronto plays a clean(er) game and doesnt take as many penalties so game management comes in and lessens penalties overall.
lsaran
Curious to see how other Canadian teams rank. I’m convinced Bettman hates Canada. What is the statistical probability that a Canadian team not win a cup for 30 years straight? Seems incredibly small.
CommanderTouchdown
There’s no way for this to occur “naturally”. If you ran game simulations with proper officiating models, you’d get a much wider spread.
Simple fact is that Toronto is the mecca of hockey and the added eyeballs / importance of Leafs games means the officials are more likely to put their “thumbs on the scale”.
Refs don’t call shit against the Leafs cuz they don’t want to participate in the “alleged Leafs favoritism” that shitheads like Daryll Sutter and Marc Spector pretend exists.
epicfacej
I agree with the sentiment of the post but it’s also important to note that PP opportunities are better than PP time when evaluating how the refs treat a given team. The Leafs have had at least a pretty good PP for most of this period so they obviously have more than average PP’s ending when they score.
lifeisarichcarpet
I think using power play opportunities, not time, is more helpful here. The Leafs are second in the league in PP%, which means they have their PPs ending early as a result of goals more often than anyone except the Oilers. If you go by power play opportunities, they’re 22nd (this year), 21st, 21st, 23rd, 31st, 29th and 16th (way back in 2016-17). Still bullshit, but more accurate.
Reggae4Triceratops
Ya but we had one game against the Devils where a handful of calls (rightfully) went in our favour, so obviously the refs love and have always loved the Leafs.
howsshegoin
this is absolutely ridiculous and a stain on the nhl. considering the skill up and down the lineup there’s no excuse for this short of negligence on the part of the league.
keefe really needs to take the fine. this can’t continue.
TheWilrus
What really astounding is the lowest ranks come when they were arguably the fastest when they would get interfered with or hooked quite often. The slower and most aggressive they get as a team the more PP time they get? Aside from last year at 29th again.
Kevin4938
Post it in r/hockey and the comments will be along the line of “fake news”.
DKM_Eby
Where do these stats exist? I’m curious to check on all teams the past few years and see where everyone lands and if there is consistency elsewhere.
I also remember a sound bite from a ref a while ago saying he “wanted to get one on them early” even though he knew it wasn’t much of a penalty. I don’t think this was Toronto, but that right there I think shows refs aren’t really trying to call an entirely fair game.
dntstpblevin
I think at least a small part of it is the large number of refs in the league that are from Ontario, (used to be over 50%) grew up cheering for the leafs, and as such are overcompensating. That and the fact that so many Leafs games are nationally televised —so every call is more scrutinized —therefore less calls made.
Also game management sucks. But without it 4-5 teams would be out of the playoffs by Christmas and Gaaary doesn’t want that.
xtzferocity
I’d love to know where the Leafs rank in 5 on 3s per season. I’m sure it would be near the bottom in spite of how much talent they have.
The-Only-Razor
Lol, our entire roster other than like 4 or 5 guys has gone through multiple changes during that time. We’ve changed head coaches. Our style of play has shifted quite significantly. **SOMEHOW** though, our PP has remained dead static despite being an offensive powerhouse the entire time.
Still not a second of 5 on 3 powerplay time this entire season by the way. Purely coincidental.
Chad_Broski_2
Power play time is a weird metric, though. Wouldn’t a team with a really good powerplay unit tend to score early on powerplays and lower their own powerplay time? Shouldn’t we be using the number of powerplays awarded rather than total minutes of time on the powerplay?
M0un05ki10
Partly because we either score two seconds into the PP or not at all lol
31 Comments
> you come into Toronto. You know what goes on
The worst part is opposing fans will swear up and down that Toronto gets help from the refs. Usually fans of teams that get far more favourable officiating but choose to blindly believe otherwise
Dare you to post this to r/hockey
Yeah, it’s weird. Otherwise pugnacious teams come to Toronto and treat our players with courtesy and respect.
People will blame guys like kadri and bunting for “diving” and losing the benefit of the doubt with refs, but we clearly never had it to begin with. The talent we have, the puck possession we maintain, there’s no possible way we consistently see these numbers so consistently for powerplay time without some kind of bias happening.
And before people say the players are soft and don’t draw penalties, I’d like to point out how much the personnel has changed over those 7 years. There’s 1 dman, and 3 forwards that have remained since 2016.
But refs favour the Leafs!
I would love to see their rank in penalty kill time per season. Cause generally powerplay and penalty kill time are correlated for a team
I want to see their PK time.
Then I want to see both for Boston.
That’s entirely too consistent for it not to be suspicious at this point.
I’m telling you, officials are **terrified** to look, even the tiniest bit, bias towards the Leafs. So much so that they’re intent swings way into the negative side of the scale.
If they’re hard and unfavourable to TOR, no one cares — all is right in the world. If they look positively bias towards us? The entire league freaks out.
Pathetic. Worst officiated league in pro-sports. Fuckin hate the NHL.. why does my fav team and sport have to be in this semi-pro bum ass league
But time on pp is mitigated by scoring on pp so that would have to be taken into account as well
[deleted]
So what you’re saying is it all went down hill when Tavares came into town?
Show that to Sutter.
NHL referees believe their job is to manage the game, not call all the infractions they see. The Leafs don’t take many penalties, so the refs don’t give them manys pp’s to make the game even
I have zero idea why the NHL is so utterly shit when it comes to upholding unbiased refereeing. It is plain to any fan – casual or long-time – to see that refereeing is completely broken and lacks nearly all objectivity.
Bettman is a sham. His literal job description is is being “charged with protecting the integrity of the game of professional hockey and preserving public confidence in the League.”
He has completely failed in this aspect. What job can I get that pays $9.6M to not do a single thing right?
I also wonder why the Board of Directors – who Bettman is responsible to – isn’t more active in this. Does Larry Tennenbaum really sit in those meetings and say, “Yeah, this league is demonstrably biased against my team, but evening out games helps the overall quality and excitement of the sport so whatevs.”
Maybe he does. Which means the only way things change is if fans have had enough and stop watching.
I’d say NHL viewing rights – that continues to black out games even for a paid service – is helping that already.
Massive fucking joke this league is.
Cumulative (because I’m lazy)
Toronto is 29th in the league for PP TOI since 2016/17 (Seattle obviously 32, vegas also missing a season in there)
But Toronto is 26 in PK TOI in the same time period. These are correlated. It isn’t a bias against Toronto specifically, it is that Toronto plays a clean(er) game and doesnt take as many penalties so game management comes in and lessens penalties overall.
Curious to see how other Canadian teams rank. I’m convinced Bettman hates Canada. What is the statistical probability that a Canadian team not win a cup for 30 years straight? Seems incredibly small.
There’s no way for this to occur “naturally”. If you ran game simulations with proper officiating models, you’d get a much wider spread.
Simple fact is that Toronto is the mecca of hockey and the added eyeballs / importance of Leafs games means the officials are more likely to put their “thumbs on the scale”.
Refs don’t call shit against the Leafs cuz they don’t want to participate in the “alleged Leafs favoritism” that shitheads like Daryll Sutter and Marc Spector pretend exists.
I agree with the sentiment of the post but it’s also important to note that PP opportunities are better than PP time when evaluating how the refs treat a given team. The Leafs have had at least a pretty good PP for most of this period so they obviously have more than average PP’s ending when they score.
I think using power play opportunities, not time, is more helpful here. The Leafs are second in the league in PP%, which means they have their PPs ending early as a result of goals more often than anyone except the Oilers. If you go by power play opportunities, they’re 22nd (this year), 21st, 21st, 23rd, 31st, 29th and 16th (way back in 2016-17). Still bullshit, but more accurate.
Ya but we had one game against the Devils where a handful of calls (rightfully) went in our favour, so obviously the refs love and have always loved the Leafs.
this is absolutely ridiculous and a stain on the nhl. considering the skill up and down the lineup there’s no excuse for this short of negligence on the part of the league.
keefe really needs to take the fine. this can’t continue.
What really astounding is the lowest ranks come when they were arguably the fastest when they would get interfered with or hooked quite often. The slower and most aggressive they get as a team the more PP time they get? Aside from last year at 29th again.
Post it in r/hockey and the comments will be along the line of “fake news”.
Where do these stats exist? I’m curious to check on all teams the past few years and see where everyone lands and if there is consistency elsewhere.
I also remember a sound bite from a ref a while ago saying he “wanted to get one on them early” even though he knew it wasn’t much of a penalty. I don’t think this was Toronto, but that right there I think shows refs aren’t really trying to call an entirely fair game.
I think at least a small part of it is the large number of refs in the league that are from Ontario, (used to be over 50%) grew up cheering for the leafs, and as such are overcompensating. That and the fact that so many Leafs games are nationally televised —so every call is more scrutinized —therefore less calls made.
Also game management sucks. But without it 4-5 teams would be out of the playoffs by Christmas and Gaaary doesn’t want that.
I’d love to know where the Leafs rank in 5 on 3s per season. I’m sure it would be near the bottom in spite of how much talent they have.
Lol, our entire roster other than like 4 or 5 guys has gone through multiple changes during that time. We’ve changed head coaches. Our style of play has shifted quite significantly. **SOMEHOW** though, our PP has remained dead static despite being an offensive powerhouse the entire time.
Still not a second of 5 on 3 powerplay time this entire season by the way. Purely coincidental.
Power play time is a weird metric, though. Wouldn’t a team with a really good powerplay unit tend to score early on powerplays and lower their own powerplay time? Shouldn’t we be using the number of powerplays awarded rather than total minutes of time on the powerplay?
Partly because we either score two seconds into the PP or not at all lol