Do the NHL's Original Six franchises receive special treatment?

Philly is a -11. Freaking Carcillo.

I figured that surely these things balance out over time and every team goes through stretches where rough stuff seems to draw suspensions or not.

And you supposed that five and a half years was a long enough time for everything to balance out? Why should they be expected to balance out at all? The Red Wings and Blackhawks have been playing games against one another for 84 years and currently the Wings have 100 more wins than the Hawks. That timeline is more than 15 times longer than your 5.5 years and it’s nowhere near evened out.

Although, what I would like to see in that graph is not the victim/perp numbers broken down by age of the franchise, but broken down for their place on Forbes’ annual franchise valuations. I think, other than the Philadelphia outlier where it’s something of a self-propagating system built partially on the team’s reputation as viewed by outsiders and partially on the team’s desire to live up to its reputation, that you’ll find numbers that match much more closely.

It’s not how long a team has been around that dictates this, but rather who brings in the most money.

I would also like to see the “suspension percentage rate”, although that would take a lot more work and I’m not sure how easily it could be done; I’d like to see how many times there was an act that caused an uproar that should have caused a league review, but didn’t end up in any supplementary discipline. I’d like to know how often the Predators have been on the receiving end of hits that should have gotten a perp suspended, but didn’t.

The NHL and their suspensions and fines are like Fox News. They may both say they are fair and balanced, but reality shows they are biased. Thats just how things are. We have to accept that things aren’t going to come easy for the Preds and that they don’t get treated fair. Its just the way things are and nothing we can do will change that. Big props to the wings fan though for knowing how to use a computer.

“Uh, sorry Rick Nash, but while that hit was arguably clean and actually pretty weak, Columbus is several suspensions behind the league average, and we need to catch you guys up, so….”

Oh, and wasn’t that Parker that went after Witt in that link?

Heck, the New York Rangers almost look like the home team for the folks at NHL Headquarters. Wait a minute…

Think about this. They all work in New York. They consume New York sports media more than any other. They’re not fans of the Rangers, obviously, but I can see why they’d subconsciously favor them a bit. It makes sense.

Fascinating analysis. Thanks for doing the legwork on it.

Simple question: WHY do the original six teams enjoy the protection of the league’s broken supplemental discipline system?

We’ve got anecdotal pieces that indicate that the Predators should have four more numbers in the “victims” column, but no attempt to rectify or even discuss whether that number should also “even out” among all 30 league teams. If the Predators should have seen four more suspensions given their enemies for acts against them, shouldn’t every team have, still leaving them near the bottom?

How much of this is affected by the location of the media?

If it’s the original six teams getting all of the protection without the media, then it should bear out in the by-division numbers. If so, then why is the Central Divison, the team with two Original-Six teams to the Atlantic’s one “protected” as the victim only about 2/3rds as often as the Rangers’ division?

If it’s more about the age of the franchise than the profitability and the media exposure, then why is it that the two divisions closest to the largest population density and media density area in the two countries (Atlantic and Northeast) make up 42% of all of the protected victims?

Is it only that the Southeast lacks Original Six teams that makes them last in the league in percentage of “protection” with 11.5% or is it also that this just so happens to be the least-profitable division in the league?

You came to the conclusion you wanted to come to and left a lot of analysis off the table so you could get there.

good to see fans of the original six fighting to keep their special treatement. kudos to them. I don’t blame them for not wanting to give it up or admit they have it… but come on, we all know they do get it

First, how much did repeat offenders play into this data? For example, Chris Pronger has been suspended a total of 3 times while with the Ducks since the lockout. There are a couple of other instances where one player has been suspended multiple times with the same team (Scott Nichol, Chris Simon, Andre Roy). I understand that each of these incidents was against a different “victim”, but it might appear to be more objective if you mentioned that some teams had the same player suspended multiple times.

Also, I’m a little curious as to why you chose the lockout as your starting point. It would seem that if you are trying to infer that the NHL is systematically trying to show preferential treatment to older franchises, then you should look at when the current regime took charge. Colin Campbell has been in charge of handing out supplementary discipline since 1998, and I would love to see a breakdown of the suspensions from that date. Without doing any research at all, I can tell you that Boston would have 1 more “perpetrator” with Marty McSorely, as would Toronto with Tie Domi’s sucker-punch of Scott Niedermayer. I understand that some of the teams were not around at that time, but it would be a much bigger sample size than the 5 years you referenced in your post, and could prove that things do indeed “balance out” over a longer period of time.

Not just the Rangers (7) but the Red Wings (7) . Add the email fiasco from a few months ago and Im pretty sure I could get this to a trial. Im willing to bet that if we look at Colies whole tenure we would see the same patern emerge. I dont happen to think that its a Original six thing its a team Colie used to work for thing. Rangers +7, Wings +7 vs Montreal +4, Chicago -2, Toronto +3, Boston +4. The other Original 6 arent that ridiculous of a number.

Colin Campbell is an idiot.

is there any kind of information on stars in the league and them getting suspended? Cause I can think of a few who deserved it but didn’t get suspended

Guys I understand certain teams are favored (cough cough penguins), but we cant just go by suspensions/victims etc. Some teams play much more dirty than others. Think about it, when u think of a dirty team u think of the flyers. They are a -11 and that makes sense. It’s not because of favoritism or anything, it’s because there a dirty team.

Now, if you’ve watched ranger games you know their not favored AT ALL. Someone made a comment about nhl brass working in new york and favoring the rangers, which is completely untrue. Most work in toronto and top guys like bettman and cambell had pretty bad fall outs with the rangers.

Did anyone see the rangers playoff series against the sabres? How about against the penguins? crosby/malkin both getting away with slew foots and not being suspended. Ever see some of the things sean avery gets called for? I love conspiracy theories, and I honestly do believe the nhl instructs refs to favor certain teams, but to base it on suspensions is completely unfair. That just shows which teams play dirty as opposed to clean. Who’s a dirty player on the rangers? I’d like to know, really. Avery’s a douche, no doubt, but he rarely does "dirty" things. He does annoying things, and plays like a pest, but he really doesn’t take cheap shots or attempt to injure people. Lundqvist gets ran over every game and 90% of the time nothing is called.

The 7-1 ratio for your team is quite alarming, especially with all the incidents you brought up. It wouldn’t shock me at all if documents came out supporting the theory that certain teams are favored. Now if you want to think of it from a $ point of view, it favors bettman and the nhl to help weak market teams instead of strong market teams. The original six teams (save chicago) will always be able to sell out their arenas and sell merchandise, regardless of whether they are good or not. Teams like the penguins or phoenix do not have that luxury however. When they struggled, people didn’t go to games, and they almost moved.

Since then they have both gotten very good (by either taking for 5 years or magically getting better). I agree thats there’s definitely favoritism, but I wouldn’t just say "the original six franchises receive special treatment" without more substantial backing. Go watch the rangers next 5 games. There are plenty of illegal streams so you don’t have to worry about paying. Just 5 games. Watch how many calls the team doesn’t get. Please. All I ask, is before saying the nhl in biased and a certain team is favored, watch of a few of that teams games.

Just like all of you, I pull my hair our screaming at the refs each game. I understand the frustration and anger completely.

has anyone else noticed SheaWeberForPresident has been really quiet lately? I know that has nothing to do with anything, just something I have noticed lately

it is interesting. I also think O6 teams get this treatment just because of media coverage of their games… although Pittsburgh has good media coverage as well and don’t have a lot of suspensions happening.

I also remember someone pointing out that there are quite a bit less penalty calls on average for the feature Saturday night game on HNIC than a regular NHL regular season game. Kind of the opposite situation: they know CBC will complain if there are too many penalties called, and avoid it. The late game, however, doesn’t get that same treatment.

Question: Did Ottawa get screwed out of a goal last night?

we are missing the real point here…. Wardo got smacked in the face with a stick and nothing happend. SOB did the same thing and he got suspeneded. The only stat we need is that Colin Campbel is a douche

It is more of a big market/hockey hotbed bias to my thinking.

that the teams with fewer suspensions against them have had fewer instances of plays where a player could be suspended?

While your analysis certainly is interesting, I feel it falls flat for not showing the percentage of suspendable plays that resulted in a suspension. Let’s take the Rangers and the Flyers as two examples:

Let’s say the Rangers committed (since the lockout) five acts that are deemed suspendable. Four of those actually resulted in a suspension. Now what if the Flyers who have been suspended 14 times since the lockout committed 28 acts that warranted a look from Hockey Operations? That means that the Rangers were suspended for 80% of their infractions yet the Flyers were only suspended for 50% of their infractions. Your perceived bias towards original six teams crumbles.

I can’t believe I am seeing this thread fight on here. I mean, I am enjoying it, but it seems unlikely that it is coming from a group that pines for a bearded, pedophilic-situation-alerting bear to show up in a game thread.
heheh

I’m actually quite surprised that my beloved Isles are treated (by this particular definition) “fairly” when it comes to suspensions (but they’re middle of the pack when it comes to franchise age, so there ya go!). Over the past few years, some rather devious deeds were done at our expense, and nothing was called. Meanwhile, nothing is ever forgiven if an Islander does anything even remotely bad. But naturally, there’s always going to be some overlapping factors, such as placement in the standings (I don’t think last-place teams are ever treated fairly).

I’ve posted here before that the Preds are a much better team than others give them credit for (based on my power rankings, which in turn are based purely on calculations. The most recent rankings are here, if you’re interested in seeing them: http://www.lighthousehockey.com/2011/1/31/1966363/islanders-remaining-schedule-nhl-all-star-break-power-rankings). I think if they got the credit they deserve, more things would be called their way on a smaller scale (game-by-game). But after looking at your work, I’d have to wonder if they’d ever be treated equally on the larger scale (suspensions).