NHL Average Career Goals between 1917/18 - 2005/06 Seasons

This section looks at the career goals distribution of all NHL skaters between 1917/18 - 2005/06 seasons. The data includes all forwards and defensemen who played their last regular season NHL game before or during the 2005/06 season. NHL all-time goal leaders can be viewed in the stats section. Distributions for career assists and points are analyzed on separate pages.

On each chart, the horizontal axis (x-axis) shows the number of goals scored and the vertical axis (y-axis) the number of players. The red columns show the number of players in each goals group. Data labels have been added to the charts where they fit comfortably.

The tables below show summary statistics for the regular season data across player positions. The average forward has scored 58.98 and the average defenseman 19.51 goals during their careers. Wayne Gretzky and Ray Bourque hold the career records for goals scored for forwards and defensemen respectively.

The charts below show how career goals are distributed between all skaters as well as forwards and defensemen separately. Each chart groups the number of goals scored into 20 goal buckets and shows the number of players that fall into each bucket. The first bucket (zero goals) is an exception as it shows the number of players who didn't score a single goal during their careers.

As suggested by the medians above, the distributions are highly skewed to the left. This makes it difficult to see the shape of the distribution for players who have scored more than 20 goals during their careers. To overcome this problem the distributions are broken down to two parts - Left Tail and Right Tail - which show the distributions for low scoring careers (20 goals or less) and high scoring careers (over 20 goals) respectively.

Click on the buttons below to move between the player positions or to switch between the full distribution and the tails.

Finally, the table below shows the percentages of NHL players who score different number of goals during their careers. For example, 29.76% of defensemen don't score a single goal during their careers and 44.81% score between 1 and 20 goals. The data in the table is also displayed in the chart below for forwards and defense.

The tables below show summary statistics for the playoffs data across player positions. The average NHL player scores only 3.39 post season goals during his career. Median is zero for both forwards and defense, which means that over 50% of NHL players finish their careers without scoring a single goal in the playoffs.

The charts below break down the playoff goals into 5 goal intervals. Similarly to regular season charts, I have split the distributions in two to make the distribution shapes for both low scoring (20 goals or less) and high scoring (over 20 goals) careers more apparent.

Click on the buttons below to move between the player positions or to switch between the full distribution and the tails.

Finally, the table below shows the percentages of NHL players who score different number of goals during their playoff careers. For example, 63.18% of NHL players don't score a single goal during their playoff careers and 20.66% score between 1 and 5 goals. The data in the table is also displayed in the chart below for forwards and defense.

QuantHockey: NHL All-Time Goal Leaders

QuantHockey: Most Goals in One Season

The data set does not include any players who have played in the league after 2005/06 season. They are excluded because we only want to include skaters whose NHL careers are over. There is no doubt that some skaters who haven't played in the league since 2005/06 will still return, but their number is likely to be sufficiently small not to obscure the analysis.

At present, skaters who have appeared in playoffs only are not included in the data set. This only affects the distribution for playoff career goals.