This post asks and answers the question: How well did the New Jersey Devils do at drawing and taking penalties in 5-on-5 play last season? It also looks at the Devils players from last season and incoming Devils to see if this will be something to expect to be better for next season.
Drawing penalties is generally a good, if painful, thing for a player to contribute. Getting fouled by the opposition in 5-on-5 play often leads to a 5-on-4 power play. Even if the power play is often an ineffective run of two minutes of unimpressive zone entries and statuesque player movement – like the New Jersey Devils power play under Mark Recchi and Travis Green – it is still a positive in that it forces the opposition to not attack. Presuming there are no turnovers or missed passes that give the opposition an odd man rush against some questionable goaltending. How good are the New Jersey Devils at this? Let us look at the data and find out.
Context
First, some perspective. Every penalty in the NHL has someone who takes one. Not every penalty has someone who draws it. There is no one to draw a delay of game, for example, or a faceoff violation. But most of penalties has a victim, who “draws” the call. How often does this happen? In 5-on-5 play last season, 793 of the 924 skaters that saw NHL ice for at least one second in 2023-24 drew at least one (1) penalty according to Natural Stat Trick. The median of that group of 793 sits at 395th and 396th; where a lot of players being tied with nine (9) penalties drawn. If a player has drawn 9 or more penalties last season, then they are up in the top half of all NHL players.
This is not to say that the highest count is a very large number. Matthew Tkachuk led the NHL last season with 46 penalties drawn per Natural Stat Trick. He was one of the six players to have drawn 40 or more penalties. The other five were Brady Tkachuk, Brad Marchand, Nazem Kadri, Lucas Raymond, and, believe it or not, Garnet Hathaway. The count does not go down consistently. Only another seven players drew more than 30 penalties last season. Only 32 total players drew more than 25. And only 84 players out of the 793 players last season drew more than 20 calls. Obviously, drawing more calls means drawing more man advantages which is good. But anything above 20 is rather a lot.
Mind you, that count is out of all skaters. Most were forwards. You would expect defensemen to come up shorter on this list since they are typically not driving in deep on offense or doing things that warrant an opponent to foul them. The data at Natural Stat Trick backs this up. The leader in drawn penalties among defensemen only last season was Andreas Englund of Los Angeles with 25. Only 11 defensemen in the NHL drew more than 20 last season. Only 83 defensemen drew more than 10 penalties last season. This is to say that if you have a defensemen who can draw double-digit calls, then you have an uncommon benefit. Provided that the player also did not take as many or more calls. Englund, for example, took 24 penalties in 5-on-5 play although 13 of them were minors and 11 were majors. That was a positive for Los Angeles. Radko Gudas of Anaheim, well, he took 42 total penalties with 35 minor penalties; that more than offset the 23 calls he drew. That was a negative for an Anaheim team full of them in 2023-24. (No, Gudas’ “intimidation factor” did not make the Ducks any less of a doormat team last season.)
The latter point should not be fully ignored. Just as some players can draw calls, taking calls is costly for the team. Sure, some color commentators and fans may justify such calls. Generally, putting your team on the PK is not a good thing to do regardless. The tricky part is that there is not a clear count of penalties taken that lead to a power play. Penalties taken at NST counts up all penalties. Misconducts and majors often do not yield power plays. To that end, someone like Englund is not necessarily hurting the team by putting them down a man for all of his 11 majors. Counting only minor penalties may be a safer assumption for those that yield power plays. But those also include any matching minors. There is no happy difference, but for this post, I shall include both.
Lastly, the readily available data is player-based. But with some work on a spreadsheet, we can find out the team count since NST does allow data to be copied and downloaded as a comma-separated values file. Let us see how the Devils and the rest of the NHL stacked up by drawn penalties, penalties taken (all and minors), and the difference between them.
Penalties Drawn and Taken By Team in 5-on-5 Play for 2023-24
In 2023-24, the New Jersey Devils drew 232 penalties in 5-on-5 play. They took 260 total penalties and 233 minor penalties. This yielded a difference of -28 for penalties drawn minus penalties and -1 for penalties drawn minus minor penalties only. How did this rank? Usually in the middle third of the league. The Devils ranked tied for 21st with Seattle in total penalties drawn, tied for 16th with Colorado for total penalties taken, 14th in minor penalties taken, tied for 23rd with Chicago for penalties drawn minus total penalties taken, and 23rd in drawn minus minor penalties.
Natural Stat Trick
The extremes of the league show that Nashville was a superior team in terms of drawing more calls than they took – especially compared with minor penalties only. Las Vegas was also the leagues most disciplined team in terms of taking calls at all in 5-on-5 play. I am actually surprised that the G-Knights and the Islanders collectively took fewer than 200 minor penalties during 5-on-5 play in an 82 game season. Likewise that Dallas just drew 209 calls, the fewest in the league – which is about even with what they took.
At the opposite end, Florida drew the most calls in the NHL and finished 10 behind Anaheim for the most calls taken in the NHL. Given their league-leading 366 penalties taken and 323 minor penalties, the Ducks were absolutely the least disciplined team in 5-on-5 play. Do not crow too much, San Jose and Montreal, you were deep in the red in those categories as well – you just did not draw remotely close to as many calls as the Ducks did.
Also, how coincidental that the top four teams in penalties drawn in 5-on-5 play are all in the same division: Florida, Ottawa, Detroit, and Tampa Bay. Only Florida ended up in the negative in both kinds of differences calculated. The conspiracy theorists about the league favoring Toronto or Montreal (or Our Hated Rivals) all take a blow from this fact.
Penalties Drawn and Taken By the Devils in 5-on-5 Play for 2023-24
Now that the team information is out of the way, let us focus on the team that matters for the People Who Matter: the New Jersey Devils. 33 players suited up for the Devils last season. Who drew what, who took what, and who stood out? Remember that the league median for last season’s players that drew at least one penalty is 9 drawn penalties. (Note: Players highlighted in grey are not returning to the Devils in 2024-25.)
Natural Stat Trick
The Devils had 10 players above the league median of 9 drawn calls. The excellent news is that The Big Deal drew above 20 calls. Additionally and more impressively, Luke Hughes was one of the few defensemen in the entire NHL who also drew more than 20 calls. Both drew more than what they took, which is a big plus in of itself. Nico Hischier and Jesper Bratt were also deep into the green in terms of drawing calls minus taking calls. It is also nice to see a bottom-six player like Curtis Lazar come out positive in the difference between calls taken and drawn. Those other four players, though, really carried the drawn-taken difference on the positive end. Hopefully this continues for 2024-25. It would be awesome if Luke Hughes continues to add value from the back end like this.
Unfortunately, there were negatives. Namely from Kevin Bahl and Erik Haula. They took at least 10 more calls then they drew with Bahl being especially poor with the penalties to put up a -23 difference for all penalties and a -20 difference for just minor penalties. At least Brendan Smith, also in the negative, mitigated his fouls by drawing 13 of them somehow. There were other low points. Dougie Hamilton’s season was limited to 20 games but going 0-9 on drawn-taken also sticks out like a sore thumb. Timo Meier being a net negative in his first full NHL season is, well, a negative. He was actually better at drawing more calls than he took at 5-on-5 when he was a Shark. I highlight those two big-money players as this is something where they can help add value. But it is not just them. You can see throughout the lineup that there were more players with a negative difference than not. That led to the team’s negative result overall. This is absolutely one of those things that does build up. It appears to be the case for other teams too; it is not exclusive to the Devils.
Especially when you look at these numbers for the incoming Devils for 2024-25. I kept Nathan Legare, Colton White, and Mike Hardman out as they did not appear in the NHL for 5-on-5 play in 2023-24 per NST.
Natural Stat Trick
The only incoming Devils that yielded a positive drawn-taken differential for penalties was Tomas Tatar and the limited action of Adam Beckman. Even that comes with a caveat. Tatar was actually in the red for that difference when he was with Colorado. His time with Seattle saw him draw 10 of those 13 calls. Odd. I will say that it is not so bad that apparent hit machine Paul Cotter and bottom-six winger Stefan Noesen only took a handful more calls than they drew last season. It is also not so good either.
It is not exactly a shock that the three defensemen did not draw more penalties than they took. Yet, I would hope a veteran like Brenden Dillon can be smarter with his play. Taking 28 penalties in 5-on-5 play for about a full season is a concern in of itself. 20 of those were minor penalties so it is not as if Dillon just kept racking up fighting majors to boost his penalty count. Please be more disciplined, Dillon. I fear I and others will have to write that quite a bit for the next few seasons. Similarly, I would hope Johnathan Kovacevic plays a more disciplined game when he enters the lineup. He has the incentive of needing to play for his minutes so taking a penalty would usually hurt that effort. Then again, Kovacevic is not a young guy and it is unknown if he can be taught to be smarter with his stick and his physical play.
Overall, though, it is not a group that drew more than they took last season in 5-on-5. While some were worse than others, it is not a group that should be expected to get the Devils on the right side of the drawn-taken differential.
So What Does This Mean for Next Season?
It is tempting to say that this will get better because Bahl and others who took notably more penalties than they drew are not going to be Devils in 2024-25. I have made this mistake in the past. Let us take a step back and look at what leads to these things happening.
What leads to calls being taken is usually due to one or two things: a player is beat and needs to foul their opponent or a player fouls because they are not mindful of what they are doing. It will come down to the player and the coaching staff to try to mitigate both of these sources. As far as calls being drawn, making the opposition foul a player requires giving them a reason. This means having possession, doing something with it, and putting the opposition in uncomfortable situations. It is arguable the Devils did not do that enough. last season. While players will be the ones making it happen on the ice, it is up to the coaching staff to put in the systems and encourage the players to put the opposition in a place to take risks. I think Sheldon Keefe has the goods to make the Devils better from that perspective. Yet, until we see how they play, I hesitate at thinking or expecting the 2024-25 Devils to become one of the few to draw more than they take in 5-on-5 play just by that subtraction.
Even with Bahl departed along with others like Smith, John Marino, etc., this does not mean other players cannot provide pain this regard. Erik Haula is still here and is a risk. Defensemen like Dougie Hamilton and others can help drag down the big gain Luke Hughes could provide once again. Moreover, the incoming Devils do not inspire confidence in this category either based on what they did last season. From the player perspective, unless some sharpen up their discipline and/or get the opposition to make mistakes, I do not see a lot changing ahead of next season.
What does this mean? It means that the power plays are still going to be driven by the Hughes brothers, Hischier, Bratt, and hopefully Lazar. Hopefully, others provide more of a benefit than not. Until I see otherwise, I would expect the Devils to rank around the same when it comes to drawing and taking calls in 5-on-5 play next season. Which is a bit unfortunate because being able to get a couple of extra power plays or having fewer penalties to kill can both absolutely help a team looking to win more games and earn more points in 2024-25. The good news is that it does not appear that, at a team level, being great (e.g. Florida, Ottawa) or relatively not-great (e.g. Dallas, Las Vegas) at drawing calls necessarily ensures a successful season. It can help, though.
Your Take
This is how I see the Devils going into this coming season with respect to drawing calls and taking calls in 5-on-5 play. I do not think they will be that much better. The guys who drew most of them last season – The Big Deal, Luke Hughes, Hischier, Bratt, and, why not, Lazar – will likely do it again. The incoming Devils are not necessarily going to help this cause even as they replace others who were on the wrong end of a drawn-taken penalty differential. If there is going to be change, it will likely have to come from others making a concerted effort to be more disciplined or Keefe and his staff putting the Devils more in positions to force the opponent to penalize them. However, I can be proven wrong about this when the games begin.
In the meantime I want to know what you think. Who do you expect to draw the most calls on the Devils next season? Who will take the most penalties – and the most minor penalties if you want to take out majors and misconducts? With Bahl gone, who will have the worst drawn-taken differential on the team? What do you make of the overall team results; did any of them surprise you? Please leave your answers and other thoughts in the comments. Thank you for reading.