Many people will tell you that penalty minutes go down during the playoffs compared to the regular season. That’s not particularly true. At least not in the last couple of years.
Last postseason, 8 of the 16 teams who made the Stanley Cup Playoffs had greater than 10 PIM/60. That’s half of the field. Compare that to the regular season when 11 out of 30 teams had greater than 10 PIM/60, or about one-third of the field.
In the 2015-2016 regular season, the NHL averaged 9.99 PIM/60.
In the 2016 playoffs, the teams averaged 11.