All about the Numbers: THE BEST 37 MINUTES AND 50 SECONDS OF OUR LIVES

​SRJC’s Top 10 statistics of the 2015-16 season: No. 7 — Penalty free hockey

For a team that takes a massive amount of penalties a game, you can imagine our surprise when SRJC was just two minutes, 10 seconds short of going an entire two periods without a penalty during the Jan. 14 game against College of the Canyons. 

The Polar Bears take an average of 6.64 penalties a game, so the fact that CoC's first goal—the only goal between the teams in the first period—didn't come on the power play was pretty impressive. I mean, it wasn't cool that the enemy scored, but the fact that they didn't get one on an extra advantage says a lot about SRJC's discipline against a team its been known to skate circles around.

"We were all pretty happy about the disciplined play that game," said defensemen Aj Spears. "It allowed us to put some good pressure on CoC, which lead to some great plays, and ultimately another win on the season."
There were two others times during the year when Polar Bear players did not register a single penalty in a period: the Nov. 7 game against Division II team San Diego State University and the Nov. 20 game against DII San Jose State University. SRJC did not commit a foul in the first period against SDSU en route to a 5-2 win. And nothing was on the score sheet for the second period against SJSU. In fact, the Polar Bears only had two penalties total that game while forcing seven from San Jose. SRJC even scored two power play goals in its 6-3 victory. 

So is it a coincidence that the games where SRJC had penalty-free periods ended in huge victories for the Polar Bears?  Well, there might be some connection but we'll leave that topic for another day.

Going several periods without a penalty, and going nearly 40 minutes penalty-free is an SRJC record. Well, we’re pretty sure that’s a record. We’ve only been able to keep detailed stats for the last two seasons. Before that they had us on lobby duty. We got really good at saying, "Would you like to buy a chuck-a-puck?"

Tune in Thursday, March 10 to see what No. 6 is on SRJC’s Top 10 Statistics of the 2015-16 season