A Note About Penalties in the Stanley Cup Playoffs

How a Trend Could Impact the Rest of This Year's Final

Tonight, the Florida Panthers could become the second back-to-back Stanley Cup champion this decade with one more win over the Edmonton Oilers. But, the identity of this season’s hockey team is a little different than the last two to make the Final. Now, Florida has played a physically imposing brand of hockey, to where of all hits recorded in their games, Florida was doing the hitting at a 57.3% clip in the regular season, the highest rate in all situations. In the last two seasons, the Panthers finished 11th and 18th in the NHL in hit rate. This series has featured mainstays like Aaron Ekblad combining for 25 hits and prodigal son Dmitry Kulikov’s 20 hits all helping the cause.

One reason why playing this style works is because of the state of hockey right now. A recent ESPN article pointed out there have been fewer power-play chances per team per game this season than in any season since at least the 1977-78 campaign. Knowing this trend, and knowing they were the defending champions, one real and fair concern for the Panthers was if that newfound punishing style would work in the playoffs. Even if officials are calling fewer penalties, they do tend to call more of them in the playoffs, at least over the last decade:

Perhaps as expected, no team these playoffs has averaged more penalty minutes taken per 60 minutes than Florida (9.81). It would seem like giving Edmonton additional power plays with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl on the ice at the same time would be disastrous, but the Oilers have only scored four times out of 23 power play opportunities. A 17.4% conversion rate is below what’s considered good, and well below what the Oilers have been able to sustain in previous series recently.

Again, officials call more penalties in the playoffs than in the regular season, but does that trend change within each round? Granted, there are much smaller sample sizes spotlighting individual rounds, but by fighting through the variance, we tend to see more penalty minutes taken per game in the Stanley Cup Final than at any other time during the season:

It’s possible that, if more penalties are called in Game 6—and potentially Game 7—the advantage would belong to Florida thanks to its 30.4% power-play conversion rate. However, Edmonton tends to hover around 25% over the last couple regular seasons (even reaching 32% during the 2022-23 campaign). Because of just how rare goals are, it may not take much for Edmonton to get back to scoring on the man advantage, and if history is any indicator, they’ll have the chances to do so. I suspect they will and send this series back to Canada, but if they do not, anything and everything Florida has done to stifle Edmonton’s power play will be an enormous part of what’s made them champions.