Refs have been much harsher on Berube's Leafs teams vs. Keefe's

Depending on who you watch a Toronto Maple Leafs game with, they’ve probably got some opinions on how the referees treat the team.

As hockey’s biggest market — but also a team that’s the rival of just about everyone they play against  — there are all sorts of theories about how the refs treat the blue and white.

Some fans might think that the Leafs get the favourable end of the stick more often than not, while others think league officials dial up the B.S. when Toronto is involved.

But whatever your biases may be, the data shows that the referees have not been overly kind to the Leafs this season.

In fact, it’s not hard to argue that the Leafs have been facing tougher referee decisions this year than any other in recent memory.

Looking solely at raw penalty numbers doesn’t always account for how referees may call a game on any given night, with some games being happier and more physical than others.

An interesting stat that helps highlight this phenomenon is looking at the percentage of total penalty minutes taken, which shows how often teams draw penalties compared to who they’re playing against.

Using MoneyPuck.com’s data, we can see that Toronto is actually getting the short end of the stick the most out of any team in the league, relative to their opponents at 5v5. They’ve picked up 55.73% of the penalty minutes at 5v5, having 219 penalty minutes against compared to 174 for their opponents.

Overall, they’re in 29th place in the same stat (53.01%), picking up 238 penalty minutes compared to 211 for their opponents.

A quick glance at the last five years of Leafs hockey shows this as a pretty clear outlier.

One possible theory for the sharp change could be a switch in coaching styles from Sheldon Keefe, who led the Leafs from midway through 2019 up until the end of last season, to current coach Craig Berube.

This year, the Leafs are getting called for 8.5 minutes of penalties a night, compared to 8.2 a year ago. It’s likely not a significant enough sample to say that anyone’s been overly harsh to Berube’s Leafs, but maybe it suggests that referees are letting more go for their opponents.

But it’s not like the current Leafs coach has a history of getting jobbed by the refs, either. Berube got both ends of the spectrum in his last full three years in St. Louis: his teams ranked 5th in 2022-23, 5th in 2021-22, and 23rd in 2020-21 in the percentage of total penalty minutes taken.

Keefe’s New Jersey Devils, for what it’s worth, are getting just about even calls this year, having taken 269 minutes in penalties in relation to 270 for their opponents. So while they’re taking more penalties than Toronto, they’re also seeing their opponents called at just about the same rate.

It’s still early in the season enough to call this trend a conspiracy or anything else, but it’s an interesting stat to monitor nonetheless in Berube’s first season in Toronto.

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