As people have said above... It's all about game management.
From personal experience as an official game management is so critical. I know the second I hammer a team with a couple consecutive penalties I will be praying for the other team to give me something. It's the same when I make a bad call or miss something... I have my fingers crossed again that someone will make my job easy and give me something.
Score is a big factor as well. If team A is up by 5 goals and it's starting to turn hostile you can be guaranteed team B is getting some benefit of the doubt just to keep the game flowing.
All of this is not really anything new. Obviously I can't speak from an NHL officials perspective but a lot of their actions seem to align with this type of thinking.
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