Morgan Rielly’s stats line reveals something surprising this far into the season: The second highest scorer on the Maple Leafs still doesn’t have a penalty.

The Leafs are 22 games in, and Rielly is one of only a few NHL defencemen playing regular minutes who haven’t visited the penalty box yet.

“I noticed that the other day, actually,” the 21-year-old said, a little sheepishly, after practice Wednesday. “I’ve got to get one. I don’t want to have a goose egg up there all year. I’ve got to do something.”

Defencemen don’t usually aspire to win the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy as the league’s most gentlemanly player. Only three defencemen have ever won the Byng: Red Kelly and Bill Quackenbush with Detroit more than 50 years ago, and Florida’s Brian Campbell in 2011-2012.

“No, no, that hasn’t even crossed my mind. Not me,” Rielly pleaded when asked about the Byng.

Kelly, now 88, advises Rielly not to worry about being perceived as too gentlemanly. Just continue to play clean hockey, he said.

Kelly could get hot-tempered as a player, but he took the advice of Gentleman Joe Primeau, his coach with the St. Michael’s Majors, who told him, “You don’t win games in the penalty box.”

Kelly was adept at squeezing out attacking players against the boards and refusing to let them by him. That’s what he sees in Rielly.

“Do they get by Rielly? They don’t get by him, as far as I can see,” Kelly said. “Tell him not to be worried about winning the Lady Byng.”

The game has also changed. It’s faster and more closely scrutinized, making head shots and blindside hits an endangered species.

Rielly reasons that the less time in the box, the less time the team has to play short-handed, and the Leafs are one of the least penalized teams in the league.

“If I’m not taking any tripping or hooking penalties, it means I’m in pretty good position,” said Rielly, who had 12 penalty minutes in 73 games as a rookie, and 14 minutes in 81 games last season.

Leafs bench boss Mike Babcock, who coached Hall of Famer Nicklas Lidstrom in Detroit, made a point of saying that Lidstrom is a good example of a great defenceman who mostly stayed out of the box.

Lidstrom, who was the runner-up in Byng voting five times, didn’t have to take many penalties, Babcock said, because he was usually “on the right side” of the puck.

He doesn’t think Rielly is playing without an edge. It’s just not his style.

“I think (the penalty-free play is) great for him,” Babcock said. “It means your feet are moving and you’re not reaching and taking penalties.”

“I remember Chris Chelios telling me at one point when he was still playing, ‘We don’t chase the guys in the corners anymore,’ ” Potvin said. “You don’t have those battles down low anymore, and there are no one-on-one situations anymore because of the back pressure (forwards coming back to help).”

In his playing days, one-on-one play was very common “and they weren’t chipping the puck in,” said Potvin, who works for the Florida Panthers as a broadcaster.

He was tutored in junior by former blue-line bruiser Leo Boivin. “He showed me at the time how to have patience and then you’ll get the guy with a hip check,” Potvin said. “Well, you can’t do that now or you will get called for tripping.”

The players who are being talked about these days for the Norris Trophy — Ottawa’s Erik Karlsson, Chicago’s Duncan Keith, Dallas’s John Klingberg — aren’t succeeding by laying out bodies on the blue line.

“What they all have — and what J.C. Tremblay of the Montreal Canadiens used to have, which I admired so much — is a great stick,” Potvin said.

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He fears it will be a cheap one, perhaps a delay of game for shooting the puck over the glass.

It’s led to some crazy thoughts.

“Maybe a fight,” the six-foot-one, 205-pound Rielly said, laughing at his own suggestion since he hasn’t fought since junior in Moose Jaw.

“Maybe I’ll have to go with somebody soon,” he said, just to break the goose egg in style.

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