Dirty Cheaters? Sorting Through NHL Penalties Team-By-Team

With just ten games or so to go in the regular season, we've got a pretty good sample size to see who's been naughty and who's been nice over the course of the regular season. This isn't just a combined list of PIMs; thanks to the penalty tracker over at CBS Sports, lists of penalties have been broken down into categories.

Why is this relevant now? I don't think it's any surprise that several types of penalties wind up being called less during the stretch run and the playoffs. The standard of enforcement seemed to hold steady for two seasons following the lockout; after that, it's been fairly erratic, though things like interference have certainly gone out the window.

So let's break down penalties into two categories: dirty (boarding, charging, checking from behind, clipping, elbowing, kneeing, and roughing) and cheating (holding, holding the stick, hooking, goalie interference, interference, and tripping). Note that I'm NOT including fighting in with the dirty plays, as fighting tends to be two enforcers squaring off against each other, which is a bit different from, say, a boarding play.

Here are the teams sorted by dirty penalties so far this season:

If you're focusing on who's dirty, here's a list of all players with nine or more "dirty" penalties. Not too many surprises here.

Now let's look at cheating penalties:

And the biggest offenders -- everyone with 15 or more "cheating" penalties:

Cheating penalties tend to lighten up in the last quarter of the season and the playoffs while dirty penalties are the kinds that tend to still get noticed whenever the season. If that trend continues, then it's important to differentiate between the two styles of penalties because one of those categories will lessen, which means that the teams at the top of the "cheating" list will be able to get away with interference, hooking, holding, etc.

I'm a big fan of holding that standard of enforcement from start to finish (the notion of "letting them play" always puzzled me, because wouldn't letting them play really mean that the unskilled players SHOULDN'T get away with cheating?) and I hope that if we see a drop in, say, Calgary's PIMs over the next 10 games, it's due to them playing cleaner as they need points.