During the offseason, the Boston Bruins got rid of two of their more popular and talented players, in Dougie Hamilton and Milan Lucic. In doing so, the Bruins also managed to get rid of two of their more penalized players, when it comes to minor penalties. When looking at minor penalty average per game (we will call it MPA), Hamilton and Lucic ranked fifth and sixth on the team, with MPAs of 0.25 and 0.22, respectively. This meant that, in Dougie Hamilton’s case, the probability of him receiving a minor penalty in a game was 25%.
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I will not be looking at major penalties at all in this article since they are either from fights, that don’t result in a team being on the PK, or from unique reactions from players under unique circumstances. However, when it comes to minor penalties, these two minute punishments are, for the most part, avoidable and are caused by a player’s lack of judgement or their increase in exhaustion.
Now, some would say that getting rid of two players with stats like these would improve Boston’s odds of avoiding the penalty box. Unfortunately, the Bruins chose to add two new players to the team whose MPAs are even worse than Lucic and Hamilton’s.
Zac Rinaldo, which will be of no surprise to anyone who has seen him play, had a MPA of 0.36. That means that the chances of him getting a minor penalty in a game were more than one in three! This is the kind of statistic that will keep Zac Rinaldo on the bench, or in the press box, instead of on the ice.
Apr 4, 2015; Boston, MA, USA; Toronto Maple Leafs left wing
James van Riemsdyk(21) battles Boston Bruins right wing
Brett Connolly(14) during the second period at TD Garden. Mandatory
: Winslow Townson-USA TODAY Sports
The next player, however, is a player that Bruins fans expect to see playing every night. If anyone saw him play last year, they will already know all about his minor penalty issues. Brett Connolly, in his five games with Boston last year, managed to take five minor penalties during that time. This means that Brett Connolly was 100% likely to be penalized in the next Bruins game, based on his pace.
Obviously, those five games were incredibly unfortunate, but Connolly had penalty problems with the Tampa Bay Lightning as well. During his 50 games with the Bolts last year, Connolly took 14 minor penalties. Combine that with his stats in Boston and that gives Connolly an MPA of 0.35, just under Zac Rinaldo’s MPA. This is not good news for a Bruins team that is wanting to stay out of the penalty box.
If you think that having a one in three chance of taking a minor penalty in a game is bad, wait until you see what Adam McQuaid and Brad Marchand were up to last year. Rounding, again, to the nearest hundredth (all stats found on nhl.com), Adam McQuaid had an MPA of 0.4 last year, while Brad Marchand had an MPA of 0.5. That’s right, if you were to ask what the odds were of Brad Marchand getting a minor penalty in a Boston Bruins game last year, the answer would be 50/50, heads or tails.
Mar 28, 2015; Boston, MA, USA; Boston Bruins left wing Brad Marchand (63) tries to skate past the
of New York Rangers left wing
Rick Nash(61) during the second period at TD Banknorth Garden. Mandatory
: Bob DeChiara-USA TODAY Sports
This is just not acceptable for a player that plays as much as Brad Marchand does. When looking the NHL leaders in minor penalties, Brad Marchand ranked sixth overall. Now, I know that Marhand plays a type of game that leads to lots of minor penalties, and that he does his part to draw a lot of penalties against other teams too, but an MPA of 0.5 is just too much too handle, especially when Marchand is one of the Bruins most reliable penalty killers.
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Adam McQuaid doesn’t fair much better at his 0.4 MPA. With him also being a defensive defenseman and penalty killer, McQuaid cannot afford to take this many penalties. With McQuaid likely to take on more responsibility and more ice time this upcoming season, due to Dougie Hamilton’s absence, his MPA of 0.4 could potentially hurt the Bruins even more than it did last year.
With statistics like these that are just impossible to ignore, there is no doubt that minor penalties will, once again, play a huge factor in Boston Bruins games, night in and night out. If Claude Julien hopes to remain behind the Bruins bench for longer than this year, he will need to take these players aside and modify their approach to the game.