Jump to content

A Stunning lack of PP Opportunities


Quebecois

Recommended Posts

The stats do seem to indicate that the refs have been biased against the team this year, but they're misleading. As others have stated, Montreal's style of play is not one that is apt to draw penalties. They spend two thirds of most games in their own zone and they offensive game is so helter-skelter that it doesn't draw a lot of calls.

Every team in the league feels like the refs have it out for their team. If you listened to the Pittsburgh announcers last night, they had viewers believing the Canadiens were getting away with things left and right. I find that home team bias is most evident when discussing officiating. Most fans will be outraged when the other team gets away with something, but they won't say a word if their own team gets away with the same thing. Here we are complaining about the officiating against us, while the rest of the league thinks we get special treatment because we're the historic Canadiens. It goes both ways.

P.S. I think they banned me from posting on HI/O after I tried to comment on one of their posts with a link to HW. I guess they didn't like me saying how great HW is!

You just gave your post validity with that finish. Irony my friend

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nah something fishy with the reffing this season for the Habs. If you can't see that you're just naive. I can understand being upset every now and then with the officiating but it's almost every single game this year. I can only recall 1 game where i felt we benefited from the bad officiating.

people keep mentioning puck possession as an "excuse" for the ridiculously out of whack pp\pk ratio. Ive compared them to teams with worse shots for against ratio. Not even close. Closest is Atlanta with 13 more pps in three less games.It gets worse if you look at the actual amount of time spent on the pp.

Colorado manages less shots per game then the habs at 25.5 while giving up more shots at 32.8 but manage to have 33 more pps. Wonder how many more shots the habs could muster with a 33% increase in pps.

Doesn't end there it gets worse if you look at just how much time the habs have spent on the pp compared to teams at the bottom feeders of stats like wins, losses, shots for, shots against. Seems the habs pps are always cut short with a penalty or split by periods or getting app with less than 30 seconds left.

Seems like every time the habs start playing well, they start getting these ridiculous penalties that wouldn't be called even on the first day of the "NEW NHL", but when their losing by 2 or 3, and the game is almost over the habs finally get a few pps.

Every single team in the top of the times shorthanded also have lots of pps minus the habs. While at the other end teams with the fewest pps also have some of the fewest pks minus the habs.

2 men short for pushing during a scrum after the play? Knee on knee trip to our puck carrier, no call? Stick speared though a helmet in the middle of the ice in plain view of every single ref on the ice including the linemen. High stick that draws blood after being shorthanded for 9 minutes? BS

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is what happens when you have mouth pieces like Lapierre and guys like Laraque who won't make a point of fighting for the team...Laraque fighting may mean a few more penalty minutes but it might start opening the eyes of the more incompetent refs.

I also often wonder if chippy smallish players tend to not get calls as often as they should...and the Habs have a few of those. It may seem counter-intuitive but I've noticed something like that happening for years...

The league has long needed to do a better job of reviewing referees. Teams should have the option to send in tapes of concerns to the league...with clear consequences for refs with a lot of issues.

There have been enough games this year that a definite trend/pattern is showing...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is what happens when you have mouth pieces like Lapierre and guys like Laraque who won't make a point of fighting for the team...Laraque fighting may mean a few more penalty minutes but it might start opening the eyes of the more incompetent refs.

I also often wonder if chippy smallish players tend to not get calls as often as they should...and the Habs have a few of those. It may seem counter-intuitive but I've noticed something like that happening for years...

The league has long needed to do a better job of reviewing referees. Teams should have the option to send in tapes of concerns to the league...with clear consequences for refs with a lot of issues.

There have been enough games this year that a definite trend/pattern is showing...

This would still apply to other teams around the league. Not like Habs have the only players that yap or are small. Every team(from the top teams to the basement dwellers) have similar time on the pp over the last ten games, ranging from 60 - 75 minutes of pp time. No team in the league even come close to Montreal in regards to pp minutes with an embarrassing 32 minutes, that's less than half the league average. I have no doubt that this trend continues all the way back to the beginning of the season.

Even if you use the Habs season stats compared to other teams last 10 games, Habs can barely compete.

Teams with more than 8 minutes of pp time. Habs 3 time this year. Carolina 6 time in their last 10. Colorado 3 times in their last 10. Florida 4 times in their last 10. SJS 4 times in their last 10. Phil 5 times in their last 10. Minnesota 3 times in thier last 10. Good or bad, the quality of the team seems to not matter.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And last year Anaheim was shorthanded 80 more times than they were on the powerplay. And the year before that Florida was shorthanded 50 more times than they were on the powerplay. Are these conspiracies too? In both those years, Montreal was almost dead even in powerplays and penalty kills, where was the bias then? Let's face it, Montreal is a sloppy team that takes a lot of sloppy penalties and doesn't force the play enough to draw a lot of penalties. Refs miss calls going both ways. Refs aren't just missing calls against our opponents, they miss them on us too. I mean, the league has done us a favor or two this reason. Remember Plekanec mauling Kreji? There's no good reason why he didn't get a suspension for that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And last year Anaheim was shorthanded 80 more times than they were on the powerplay. And the year before that Florida was shorthanded 50 more times than they were on the powerplay. Are these conspiracies too? In both those years, Montreal was almost dead even in powerplays and penalty kills, where was the bias then? Let's face it, Montreal is a sloppy team that takes a lot of sloppy penalties and doesn't force the play enough to draw a lot of penalties. Refs miss calls going both ways. Refs aren't just missing calls against our opponents, they miss them on us too. I mean, the league has done us a favor or two this reason. Remember Plekanec mauling Kreji? There's no good reason why he didn't get a suspension for that.

Were on pace to smash those stats, and i do mean smash with -132. Like most of said it's not the calls against us,but the abundance of non calls compared to some of the very picky calls against us. How do we play the cleanest teams in the league every single game.

http://www.nhl.com/ice/app Goto Teams-GamebyGame-Montreal and check it out. Almost every single game habs haves 3 or less pps. Now select another team, any team team doesn't matter. now look at the pps column, almost every single game more than 3 pps per game. I can understand streaks but this is beyond a streak.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I also think the Habs 100th has something to do with it. Refs don't want to look like they're being favouritist (is that a word?) to the Habs in the Centennial, and have therefore gone out of their way to make sure they don't look like they're giving Montreal any extra benefits.

Hmm. Don't usually have much time for the victim thing, but Astute Colin may be onto something y'know it could be a factor, even an unconscious one. Ref knows Habs got all sorts of media attention, were given the All-Star Game, the Draft -- so Ref thinks "don't let myself give them the game" and overcompensates? Remember when Habs played away over the last year the local broadcasters often aired gushing (Habs-supplied) "Glory of the 100" video clips and even some in-arena stuff was done to honor the team. If a Ref were thought to be favoring the Habs then the opposition fans might imagine there was a grand conspiracy at play. ^_^ Or maybe we're the ones imagining hehehe.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
With all of the talk about the lack of PP's (and too many PK's), I did a little research to see if this was part of a trend over several years or not. The results:

http://www.habsworld.net/article.php?id=1939

Thanks for the good work. It inspired me to do a little research of my own......the main reason why there is such a large PP/PK discrepancy is because of the amount of turnovers (giveaways) we have committed so far this year. We are by far #1 at 526. Edmonton is a distant second at 459. The third place team, Buffalo, has "only" 390 turnovers, or 136 less than we do.....that is totally absurd!! But it makes sense because it's usually the team that doesn't have the puck that is going to be penalized.

Whatever system we're playing isn't working and it's burnng out our goalies & PKers. Check the link below....it's straight from the NHL site....once there click on the Total GvA tab if it has not yet been highlighted, 5th column from the right.

http://www.nhl.com/ice/teamstats.htm?fetch...e=realTimeStats

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the good work. It inspired me to do a little research of my own......the main reason why there is such a large PP/PK discrepancy is because of the amount of turnovers (giveaways) we have committed so far this year. We are by far #1 at 526. Edmonton is a distant second at 459. The third place team, Buffalo, has "only" 390 turnovers, or 136 less than we do.....that is totally absurd!! But it makes sense because it's usually the team that doesn't have the puck that is going to be penalized.

Whatever system we're playing isn't working and it's burnng out our goalies & PKers. Check the link below....it's straight from the NHL site....once there click on the Total GvA tab if it has not yet been highlighted, 5th column from the right.

http://www.nhl.com/ice/teamstats.htm?fetch...e=realTimeStats

That is a very good reason and it makes a lot of sense.

But then I see ANH 16TH in giveaways but 2nd most short handed. or Edm 2nd in giveaways but 23rd most times short.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...