Penalties

Step 01 · Count

32 drawn, 16 taken

Every minor and major in regulation and overtime is charged to the player who committed it and credited to the player the scorer recorded as drawing it (double minors, misconducts and penalty shots are left out). In 2025-26, Hughes drew 32 and took 16:

A few of the ones he drew:

Step 02 · League term

Why zero is not zero

Some penalties are taken without anyone drawing them: delay of game, too many men, puck over the glass. So the league as a whole draws fewer than it takes. In 2025-26 skaters drew 8,529 and took 8,929 over 46,978 player-games, a net of −0.00851 per game. Average penalty behaviour should be worth zero, so that rate is removed for each of his games:

Step 03 · Price

What a drawn minor is worth

The price is measured, not fitted. For every non-offsetting two-minute penalty of 2025-26, the model counts goals for the team that drew it minus goals for the team that took it in the next 120 seconds of game time. At even strength that difference would average zero by symmetry, so its average is the value of the penalty:

Offsetting minors, where both teams are penalised at the same moment and nobody gets a power play, are the control: their 1,414 cases average +0.018 goals, close to zero as they should be.

Step 04 · Value

Net penalties times the price

The same price applies to the few majors a skater draws or takes, though they bring a five-minute power play: a deliberate simplification.

Step 05 · Position

Measured against the average defenceman

After every other step, each component is re-centred once more, separately for forwards and for defencemen, so the average defenceman in 2025-26 is exactly zero in every column. The games-weighted mean penalty value of all defencemen that season was −0.01316 net goals per game, so 74 games of it come off:

Step 06 · Result

Per 84 games

Ratings are quoted per 84 games, one full schedule, so a part season and a full one sit on the same scale.

✓ Recomputed +4.76; his 2025-26 row on the player card and the Players table shows +4.8. They match.

Step 07 · Context

How unusual is this?

Skaters with 40 or more games in 2025-26 (612 players). Quinn Hughes ranks 3 of 612.

How much of a season like this is skill? The model estimates, from how much players’ own rates bounce between seasons versus how much players differ, that a career rate of penalty value is half signal and half noise after 85 games. Season rows like this one are shown exactly as they happened; careers and the card’s Regressed view are pulled toward average by that amount.