Bender
Registered User
- Sep 25, 2002
- 17,333
- 8,610
Ok...so here we go.
I went team by team and took top-6 forwards from each team who are 28 and older and compared their seasons from year to year. Then I found a list of the NHL's all-time leading scorers and found the top guys with a cut-off birth date of 1971 (cuz you gotta cut it off at some point)...so it's guys who have recently retired. I just went player by player taking the next one off the list. (If I missed any, I'll gladly add them to this list)
For the purpose of this analysis, I used the birth year of the player and matched it with the year of the season...for example :
Alex Tanguay was born in 1979 started playing in the 1999-2000 season. So for this analysis, I put his first year at age 20. (He is a November birthday and started the season at 19 but played most of it at age 20. There was no real best cutoff date, so I used this formula for all the players across the board as it was easier calculate)
Here are the results of the 75 players used in this analysis (PPG) :
18 yrs old - 42.51 PPG
19 yrs old - 63.3 PPG
20 yrs old - 60.15 PPG
21 yrs old - 61.34 PPG
22 yrs old - 67.07 PPG
23 yrs old - 70.29 PPG
24 yrs old - 72.11 PPG
25 yrs old - 71.64 PPG
26 yrs old - 70.74 PPG
27 yrs old - 73.48 PPG
28 yrs old - 68.97 PPG
29 yrs old - 70.81 PPG
30 yrs old - 69.89 PPG
So before some people start freakin' out saying "you can't use those old farts to prove anything from today's game, they played in a different era!!!".
Here it is again with the retired guys taken out. (51 Players remaining)
18 yrs old - 44.03 PPG
19 yrs old - 61.53 PPG
20 yrs old - 57.46 PPG
21 yrs old - 58.59 PPG
22 yrs old - 60.98 PPG
23 yrs old - 69.31 PPG
24 yrs old - 69.36 PPG
25 yrs old - 69.11 PPG
26 yrs old - 69.48 PPG
27 yrs old - 71.84 PPG
28 yrs old - 65.35 PPG
29 yrs old - 66.10 PPG
30 yrs old - 67.12 PPG
It's still clearly 27 years old that forwards peak at and not 22-23 though there is a noticeable 'jump' from 22 to 23 in both cases. Doing this analysis, I started to wonder where those players contract years happen to be at and if that had any effect on the results.
Here is the excel file in case some are doubting the validity of the document. Hopefully I didn't omit anyone important, if so, it's an honest mistake.
Enjoy!
I went team by team and took top-6 forwards from each team who are 28 and older and compared their seasons from year to year. Then I found a list of the NHL's all-time leading scorers and found the top guys with a cut-off birth date of 1971 (cuz you gotta cut it off at some point)...so it's guys who have recently retired. I just went player by player taking the next one off the list. (If I missed any, I'll gladly add them to this list)
For the purpose of this analysis, I used the birth year of the player and matched it with the year of the season...for example :
Alex Tanguay was born in 1979 started playing in the 1999-2000 season. So for this analysis, I put his first year at age 20. (He is a November birthday and started the season at 19 but played most of it at age 20. There was no real best cutoff date, so I used this formula for all the players across the board as it was easier calculate)
Here are the results of the 75 players used in this analysis (PPG) :
18 yrs old - 42.51 PPG
19 yrs old - 63.3 PPG
20 yrs old - 60.15 PPG
21 yrs old - 61.34 PPG
22 yrs old - 67.07 PPG
23 yrs old - 70.29 PPG
24 yrs old - 72.11 PPG
25 yrs old - 71.64 PPG
26 yrs old - 70.74 PPG
27 yrs old - 73.48 PPG
28 yrs old - 68.97 PPG
29 yrs old - 70.81 PPG
30 yrs old - 69.89 PPG
So before some people start freakin' out saying "you can't use those old farts to prove anything from today's game, they played in a different era!!!".
Here it is again with the retired guys taken out. (51 Players remaining)
18 yrs old - 44.03 PPG
19 yrs old - 61.53 PPG
20 yrs old - 57.46 PPG
21 yrs old - 58.59 PPG
22 yrs old - 60.98 PPG
23 yrs old - 69.31 PPG
24 yrs old - 69.36 PPG
25 yrs old - 69.11 PPG
26 yrs old - 69.48 PPG
27 yrs old - 71.84 PPG
28 yrs old - 65.35 PPG
29 yrs old - 66.10 PPG
30 yrs old - 67.12 PPG
It's still clearly 27 years old that forwards peak at and not 22-23 though there is a noticeable 'jump' from 22 to 23 in both cases. Doing this analysis, I started to wonder where those players contract years happen to be at and if that had any effect on the results.
Here is the excel file in case some are doubting the validity of the document. Hopefully I didn't omit anyone important, if so, it's an honest mistake.
Enjoy!