At What Age Do NHL Players Reach Their Career-High Point Totals?
Is it worth investing a large chunk of the salary cap into an aging player on the other side of their prime?
Introduction
Big name trades involving the likes of Matthew Tkachuk (24yo) and Jonathan Huberdeau (29yo) have once again raised the question of whether it is a worthy investment to sign big contract players eclipsing the peak of their careers. Here, we take a quick look at the distribution of ages at which players achieved their career-high point totals.
Data
2000–2009 skater data was pulled using the R package nhlapi. Goalies were excluded from this visualization. In total, there were 804 unique skaters that were further subdivided into five groups based on their age ([1,2] (2,5] (5,9] (9,13] (13,21)]) at which they hit their career-high point totals.
Results
The density plot below visualizes the ages of NHL skaters at which they scored their career-high point totals. The different colors correspond to five different percentile bins based on career length, where red corresponds to players that only played 1–2 seasons (0–20%), while purple corresponds to players that played between 13–21 seasons (80–100%).
Generally, all five groups peaked early and tapered off quickly. Of particular interest was the purple group (80–100%), which was relatively flat in comparison to the other groups. For these skaters that had longer careers (a rough indicator of proficiency), there was more variability over when a player achieved their max point total, with the peak around the 27yo mark. Following, there was a steady decline indicating that fewer and fewer players had their most productive seasons moving into their mid-30s.
There were some notable findings. For example, Joe Pavelski had his career-high points total (81 points) in the 2021–2022 season at the ripe age of 37. Equally impressive was when Patrice Bergeron scored 79 points in the 2018–2019 season in just 65 games (points per game of 1.22) at the age of 33. On the other extreme, Sidney Crosby achieved his career-high points total of 120 at the age of 19!
Conclusion
Based on the results, it is rare for players to hit their career-high point totals late in their careers. This does not mean their production completely drops off the table at a certain age, just that they do not quite reach that same peak level as before — stay tuned for an upcoming post examining this idea more closely. In conclusion, teams ought to err on the side of caution when signing large-contract players that are nearing the end of their 20s.
