NHL Average Number of Player "HITS" Per Game or Season?

[BobbyAwe]

Has anyone found such a stat for any year(s) since they started compiling hits? Hockey Reference lists hit totals in each individual skater's stats but I'm looking for the league totals to figure the AVERAGE per skater or just a statement from some source that's figured it out? Trying to compare the leaders in that category to the average player.

(Apologies if Hockey Reference DOES list it somewhere but it's sometimes hard to find everything you want on there?)

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[Doctor No]

One thing that will be important to note when doing that comparison is that "hits" is a very subjective statistic and is therefore meaningfully biased based on who plays half of their games in what arena. You'll notice clusters of teammates who are all at the top (or the bottom) of the league.

 

[BobbyAwe]

One thing that will be important to note when doing that comparison is that "hits" is a very subjective statistic and is therefore meaningfully biased based on who plays half of their games in what arena. You'll notice clusters of teammates who are all at the top (or the bottom) of the league.

Interesting, thanks! If I figure it myself it's going to be very approximate because all I can find is that 4.0 hits per game might be enough to lead the league in a given year, and a guy who is not physical at all will probably be under 1.0, but that DOESN'T necessarily mean the average player will be halfway between those two extremes does it?

 

[Doctor No]

Agreed - it's not necessarily (and almost certainly definitely not) uniformly distributed between the two extremes.

You can adjust for scorer bias (if you choose to - it may not be relevant for your end goal).

 

[morehockeystats]

I have all average values for all seasons for all relevant fantasy stats.

For the last full season, i.e. 2018/19, there were 56361 hits in 43880 player-games, which translates to the average of 1.284 hits per player per game. I also have a "sort of a max" value, which are average number of hits per five games (games 1-5, 6-10, 11-15 etc. for each player). Such a max average for the same season is at 7.2

 

[CupInSIX]

One thing that will be important to note when doing that comparison is that "hits" is a very subjective statistic and is therefore meaningfully biased based on who plays half of their games in what arena. You'll notice clusters of teammates who are all at the top (or the bottom) of the league.

Yeah we heard that the past couple of years about Vegas until the Edmonton employees in the bubble gave them a high number of shots & hits as well.

 

[morehockeystats]

Yeah we heard that the past couple of years about Vegas until the Edmonton employees in the bubble gave them a high number of shots & hits as well.

The bias is usually not considered team-oriented, only arena-oriented.

 

[CupInSIX]

The bias is usually not considered team-oriented, only arena-oriented.

Yes that's my point. The TMA employees don't fudge the hits or shots.

 

[Doctor No]

Yeah we heard that the past couple of years about Vegas until the Edmonton employees in the bubble gave them a high number of shots & hits as well.

What I described is a well known phenomenon, and (granting your example, which I have not checked) your example does not disprove its existence.

 

[Dingo]

im interested in this, too.