Ref stats

By popular demand (well, from one reader anyway) here's some more stats. This time it's a look at whether some of the WHL's refs have itchier whistle fingers than others.

Basically, I took all the refs who have worked at least 10 games this season and calculated the average number of powerplays that have been awarded in the games that they have worked. I used powerplays instead of PIMs because using PIMs might unfairly skew the results if a ref happens to work a few games with a lot of fighting, etc.

And here's the results:

	Games	PPs	Avg
Carl Poole	32	370	11.56
Ryan Agar	26	300	11.54
Ryan Bonnett	37	410	11.08
Russell Berdusco	34	369	10.85
Tyler Johnson	34	364	10.71
Jon Stephenson	27	289	10.70
Steve Papp	60	635	10.58
Trevor Hrycuik	33	349	10.58
Dan Cowley	38	400	10.53
Jason Mercer	14	146	10.43
Sheldon Dean	22	229	10.41
Chris Crich	28	285	10.18
Andy Thiessen	20	203	10.15
Brett Montsion	30	304	10.13
Greg Sarauer	18	182	10.11
Colby Smith	38	379	9.97
Reagan Vetter	48	475	9.90
Adam Byblow	41	404	9.85
Graham Skilliter	32	312	9.75
Nathan Wieler	58	558	9.62
Devin Klein	39	372	9.54
Ryan Thompson	40	375	9.38
Matt Kirk	56	524	9.36
Brett Iverson	26	243	9.35
Sean Raphael	47	433	9.21
Derek Herman	49	444	9.06
Chris Savage	32	288	9.00
Derek Zalaski	68	608	8.94
Trevor Hanson	56	497	8.88
Pat Smith	67	582	8.69
Curtis Howe	39	333	8.54

So basically, if you go to a game that Carl Poole is reffing, you'll on average see 3 more powerplays in that game than if, say, Curtis Howe was reffing.

Within reason, we can conclude that Poole calls a tighter game whereas Howe is more likely to "let them play". I notice a lot of the WHL's veteran refs (Herman, Savage, Zalaski, Pat Smith) are at the bottom of the average so perhaps "let them play" is something that comes with experience.