Unspecial teams

In a follow-up to a post i made last year, I made a comment on the Gazette's Habs Inside/Out blog (link on the right of this page) regarding officiating against the Canadiens:

In March of last year, I got so fed up with the refs during Habs-Leafs games that I did a statistical analysis to determine if there was indeed a bias against the Canadiens. I compared games that were officiated by referees from Ontario to games refereed by American refs or by Canadian refs coming from outside Ontario. What I found was that when the Habs played the Leafs with the other refs, they got slightly fewer power plays and slightly more penalties than their average against the 28 other NHL teams. This means that the Habs do get into penalty trouble against Toronto. But the numbers became a lot more significant when the refs were from Ontario: the Habs received 7 more penalty minutes than the Leafs per game, and were awarded 2.5 less power plays than Toronto. The analysis may have been simplistic and not exhaustive in its methods, but it still provides some numbers to back up the claim that certain refs have it out for the Canadiens (unfortunately for us, Chris Lee is from NB and not Ontario, however).

Some people have speculated that the past successes of the Canadiens have bred a generation of Habs-haters that are now in control of the decision-making at various levels of the game, most notably as referees. My Toronto friends think I'm ridiculous when I tell them I believe there is a bias out there, but the stats don't lie. A fast team like the Habs should not be penalized significantly more often than the sluggish Maple Leafs or Flyers.

I was listening to CJAD a while back and someone called in to suggest that the NHL implement a call review similar to the one the NFL uses, where coaches could request a review of one call per game with the cost of a penalty being imposed if the coach's opinion is overruled. While this may not help with the penalty-calling problem, it certainly would give the Canadiens hope when they are robbed of goals, as they were, quite blatantly I might add, twice last week in Washington and at home against the New York Rangers. Overall, it's shameful that the NHL would treat some of its most loyal and passionate fans the way it does.