Given the Dan Carcillo re-signing, I wanted to take a quick look at how the various Flyers did this year in drawing penalties as opposed to taking them. I originally just did a count, but quickly realized that tended to overemphasize things for the main players. Instead, what I'll be giving is the list based on penalty differential (penalties drawn minus penalties taken) per 60 minutes played.

1. Dan Carcillo +1.80
2. Mike Richards +1.09
3. Darroll Powe +0.81
4. Claude Giroux +0.65
5. Ville Leino +0.38
6. Danny Briere +/- 0.00
7. Matt Carle -0.08
8. Ryan Parent -0.10
9. James van Riemsdyk -0.14
10. Lukas Krajicek -0.24
11. Simon Gagne -0.47
12. Scott Hartnell -0.48
13. Kimmo Timonen -0.50
14. Jeff Carter -0.54
15. Chris Pronger -0.54
16. Braydon Coburn -0.56
17. Danny Syvret -0.95
18. Oskars Bartulis -1.02
    

Takeaways:

• There's obviously a forward/defenseman split, which makes sense. The guy handling the puck in the offensive zone is most likely to draw penalties, and that is most likely to be a forward.
• Gagne and Carter were both horrible in this stat. We complain about Hartnell taking too many penalties, yet the penalty differential for Gagne was essentially the same, and Carter was worse.
• Conversely, for all that we talk about Briere's penalties, he draws as many as he takes. Not great for someone of his (lack of) size, but he's a nasty little midget.
• Our Latvian Wolf of the Sea needs to stop keelhauling the opposition quite so much.
• The top 4 are, in my opinion, two different groups - a pair of agitators (Carcillo and Powe), and a pair of dynamic offensive players who other teams try to stop in any way possible (Richards and Giroux).