Oldest Team Ever?

[67Leafs67]

Is there anybody who has data on the oldest teams ever, in terms of average age? I know that the 1967 Cup winning Leafs have a reputation as being one of the oldest teams of all time, with the likes of Stanley. Bower, Kelly, Pronovost, Horton, Armstrong, and Sawchuk all being over 35...and really only featured Ellis, Stemkowski, Walton, and Conacher as 25 and under players.

What are the actual oldest teams of all time? Is this actually one of them? What's the oldest Cup winning team of all time?

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[SealsFan]

The '67 Leafs would have been my first guess. The Rangers had a spell where they were always acquiring name players at the end of their careers, they might be a candidate. The first-year Seals and Penguins both had a lot of guys on the other side of 30.

When calculating the average age of a team, is there a minimum of games played required?

 

[ICM1970]

I recall as a kid in 1979-80, the Boston Bruins had about the oldest team in the league with ones like Jean Ratelle. Wayne Cashman, Gary Doak, Gerry Cheevers, Bobby Schmautz, Brad Park, and a few more others over 30. But then, they had the 18-19 year old rookie Raymond Bourque, lol. In that same season, the Hartford Whalers of course had Dave Keon, Bobby Hull, Al Smith, and..Gordie Howe.

 

[JMCx4]

Could it be the 1979-80 Hartford Whalers? Gordie Howe joined the team for his final NHL season at Age 51. They also had Bobby Hull (41) and Dave Keon (39) on their roster that season, and four other 30 year-old-plus veterans. That must have pulled the team average age up by at least 10 years.

 

[The Panther]

Conversely, I've wondered what was the youngest line-up ever iced by an NHL team? In The Game of Our Lives, Peter Gzowski speculated that the 1980-81 Oilers might have been one of the youngest such. Of the twenty skaters who dressed in 40+ games, the oldest was 29 and only five were 27 or older, while nine were 23 or younger. But yeah, I've no idea how you would "officially" calculate such a thing.

We kept hearing in c.2007 to 2012 that Detroit was "old", but it wasn't an issue since they kept winning. They did have a lot of grey-beards for a while there.

 

[JMCx4]

Check the NHL team rosters during WWI & WWII for average ages. Most of the young guys joined their countries' war efforts, and older players had to fill in. C'mon, it's only six teams per season for a handful or so of seasons. One of you young folks here oughta have that much energy to spare.

 

[Ceremony]

Conversely, I've wondered what was the youngest line-up ever iced by an NHL team? In The Game of Our Lives, Peter Gzowski speculated that the 1980-81 Oilers might have been one of the youngest such. Of the twenty skaters who dressed in 40+ games, the oldest was 29 and only five were 27 or older, while nine were 23 or younger. But yeah, I've no idea how you would "officially" calculate such a thing.

We kept hearing in c.2007 to 2012 that Detroit was "old", but it wasn't an issue since they kept winning. They did have a lot of grey-beards for a while there.

You could always try calculating it manually.

 

[JMCx4]

... In The Game of Our Lives, Peter Gzowski speculated that the 1980-81 Oilers might have been one of the youngest such. Of the twenty skaters who dressed in 40+ games, the oldest was 29 and only five were 27 or older, while nine were 23 or younger. But yeah, I've no idea how you would "officially" calculate such a thing. ...

In my quick searches, I simply found a team in hockeyDB, picked a season, sorted their roster for Age oldest to youngest (to give me an idea if the rest of the exercise was worth my time), then copied the sorted content into an Excel spreadsheet that allowed me to choose the Age column content & give me an average value. Spreadsheets are a marvelous thing.

ETA: My starting point for focusing on possible "oldest teams" was this article from The Sportster that listed the Top 15 oldest active NHL players in history at the time.

 

[JMCx4]

You could always try calculating it manually.

 

[The Panther]

You could always try calculating it manually.

What I mean is, how do you account for things like games played? Or players traded in mid-season?

Really, the only way to do it correctly would be to tabulate the average age of each of the (say) 80 different rosters a team iced during an entire NHL regular season. I mean, there wouldn't actually be 80 different rosters of course, but potentially there could be.

 

[Ceremony]

What I mean is, how do you account for things like games played? Or players traded in mid-season?

Really, the only way to do it correctly would be to tabulate the average age of each of the (say) 80 different rosters a team iced during an entire NHL regular season. I mean, there wouldn't actually be 80 different rosters of course, but potentially there could be.

Fair point. I'd say the roster that finishes a season would be the one to choose as a benchmark. I googled "how are NHL roster average ages calculated" and the top result was a James Mirtle post on The Athletic which mentioned Columbus and Colorado as the youngest teams in the league with Sam Girard being named for the Avalanche - but then he was a 19 year old acquired in exchange for a 26 year old in Matthew Duchene, so that obviously made a difference.

I suppose if you (or anyone) took my advice and did try to calculate it manually they could look at a game by game basis if there were call-ups/different rosters, but that's about it.

 

[Chili]

I used to keep a spreadsheet of the league and back then (10-12 years ago) the Wings were the oldest team, including the last time they won the cup.

Since then, the average age seems to have gone down.

It would be an interesting comparison to take the average or median age of each season in league history.

Edit: Hockey Reference has the 2006-07 average age of the Red Wings as 32.3

 

[VanIslander]

I came here to say Wings, obviously.

 

[Thenameless]

What I mean is, how do you account for things like games played? Or players traded in mid-season?

You do it in a more arbitrary fashion. You take the coach's starting line-up at the start of the season. A reasonable substitution would be to use an injured regular player in the calculation, instead of the player subbing in for him.

 

[SealsFan]

The 67-68 Penguins had 18 players who were in 40 or more games (I counted both goalies as Hank Bassen played in 25 games behind Les Binkley). Average age 31.4

 

[David Bruce Banner]

@pnep

 

[SealsFan]

The 67-68 Seals had 16 players with over 40 games played, and I included backup goalie Gary Smith, who was only 23, and they come out to average 30.3. They had four more players with over 30 games played, if I included them, the average would drop to 29.1

 

[SealsFan]

With the 79-80 Whalers, after Keon and Howe there is only one other regular (over 40 games played ) who's over 30 (Rick Ley at 31). Bobby Hull only played 9 games.

 

[JMCx4]

... Hockey Reference has the 2006-07 average age of the Red Wings as 32.3

From the 10-ish minutes of searching I did this a.m., it seems if you find a team roster with an average age over 32 years old you're getting very near the answer to the OP's initial curiosity.

 

[DJ Man]

Seems to me that you'd want to look at the whole-season roster. Compute each player's age, in years (using extra days/365.25 as a fractional part), on some standard date, say January 1 of the season. Multiply this by the number of games played (for this team). This serves to weight a player who played the whole schedule 82 (or whatever) times one with a single game. (It would be better to use minutes played if available, of course.)

Add these up. Divide by the total of player*games, and you should have a weighted average in years and days for each team+season.

Easy in concept, but you'd want to do it with a program!

 

[JMCx4]

... Easy in concept, but you'd want to do it with a program!

Aw. heck, I can scratch all that up on the chalk board ...

 

[Howie Hodge]

Actually, the answer is the Detroit Red Wings......

I'll try and look up the years, but it was recent history - Stanley Cup winning team..



EDIT: 2007 -2008 season. 31.7 years. (Think - Dominik Hasek (46), Chris Chelios (43), Nicklas Lidstrom (37), Kris Draper (36) and Darren McCarty (35).)

The 1966-67 Leafs by comparison were 30.67 years old on average...

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

The 95-96 Blues were really old. About a 16 players over 30 on that roster.

1995-96 St. Louis Blues Roster and Statistics | Hockey-Reference.com

Keenan sure did enjoy nursing a retirement home.

 

[JMCx4]

The 95-96 Blues were really old. About a 16 players over 30 on that roster.

1995-96 St. Louis Blues Roster and Statistics | Hockey-Reference.com

Keenan sure did enjoy nursing a retirement home.

Average age was still only 28.6 years old over the entire season's roster, so it falls well short of the oldest. But I must've subconsciously skipped over that one as a potential contender, because I feel queasy whenever I'm reminded of Wayne Gretzky's cuppa coffee with my hometown Blues. Too bad it was decaf he was sipping in the 2nd overtime of his final appearance in a Bluenote vs. Detroit.

 

[DJ Man]

I remember that video of Aurèle Joliat skating during an old-timers ceremony at age 80+.

Too bad they couldn't have snuck him into the game for a shift. Think what that would have done to the team's average age!
He might have drawn a tripping penalty and helped the cause.