Penalties will be the Wings’ undoing this season

Last night, the Red Wings were outshot by the Blue Jackets 39-20, a historic mismatch for getting shots on the net. But what if you take away all the shots that were on the powerplay?

If you do in fact, only count the shots that were at 5v5, the game can tell a completely different story. It doesn’t quite look like the beatdown that the Blue Jackets handed to the Red Wings at first glance.

As mentioned before, in all situations the Red Wings were outshot 39-20. According to NaturalStatTrick, when it comes to pure scoring chances, the Red Wings look slightly better, only being out-chanced 32-22. To go even deeper, the Red Wings still lost the high-danger chances battle, 17-8.

Comparing these numbers tell a weird story. Basically, the Red Wings had more scoring chances than they had shots in all situations – they were just unable to get their shot off towards the net. The Blue Jackets, however, had way more shots than they had scoring chances – able to get shots on goal without really making it a scoring opportunity for them.

That plays a huge part in that number people will look at. But what really had an effect on last night’s game was the number of powerplay opportunities the Blue Jackets had because of the Red Wings taking unnecessary penalties.

The Red Wings took a total of six penalties last night, double the amount of penalties the Blue Jackets took. They were not only unnecessary penalties from the players, but some of them should not have even been called.

For instance, this was the Abdelkader slashing penalty that happened towards the end of the first period.

There is no point in complaining about what should, or shouldn’t be called, but that was a very soft penalty. Did not really have an effect on the Blue Jackets forward making a shot on goal and was definitely a “one-handed little baby tap on the arm”.

Penalties like this one and the two delay-of-game penalties the Wings had last night are really just either mistakes by the player or the referee. I won’t blame the officials on the two delay-of-game penalties, but they are completely avoidable for the Wings.

With more penalties, come more high-danger chances from the opposition. A high-danger scoring chance is usually a shot or attempt from the “home-plate” area between the two faceoff dots and below the hashmarks. This is the area that most goals are scored in the NHL.

Last night, the Blue Jackets had a total of seven high-danger scoring chances just on the powerplay alone – the Red Wings had two on their man advantage opportunities. At 5v5, the Blue Jackets were able to add another ten to that number, while the Red Wings only had four in the same timeframe.

That means that about 41% of the Blue Jackets actual scoring chances came within the six penalties that the Red Wings took. According to MoneyPuck, they had about 2.06 expected goals on the man advantage, while at even-strength they only had 1.68. The Red Wings just let them win the game by taking dumb penalties.

Also from MoneyPuck, this is a visual representation of the game last night – the bigger the circle, the more expected the goal. At all situations, you can see how many clear-cut scoring chances the Blue Jackets had in the “home plate” area on the ice. The Red Wings had some too, but the highest percentage of scoring the Wings had on an attempt was 19.2%. That was the Mantha tip that went wide of the net on the powerplay, in the middle of the second period.

At 5v5, the game would have been much closer. Penalties are unavoidable, but there are some that clearly are. Delay-of-game, barely grazing a player’s hand; these do not need to happen and prevent the Wings from actually being competitive in these games.

If the Red Wings continue to do this, they will lose a lot of games that they really shouldn’t. That might be a good thing with how this season is projected to be, but it still is frustrating to see this team just slip away in games because of needless penalties.