NHL Average Career Length Measured in Seasons between 1917/18 - 2005/06

This section looks at the career length distribution of all NHL players between 1917/18 - 2005/06 seasons. Career length is defined here as the number of seasons (How was this calculated?) during which the player played in the NHL. Career length measured in number of games played is analyzed on separate page. The data includes all forwards, defensemen and goaltenders who played their last regular season NHL game before or during the 2005/06 season.

On each chart, the horizontal axis (x-axis) shows the number of seasons and the vertical axis (y-axis) has the number of players. The red columns show the number of players for each season. For example, looking at the first chart, the data set includes 613 skaters who, during their whole career, played at least one regular season game in two different seasons.

The tables below show summary statistics on regular season data for the different player positions. When career length is measured using the number of seasons as criteria, the differences between forwards, defense and goalies are non-existent. Average number of seasons is almost identical accross the positions and the median is the same.

The charts below show how career length - measured in number of seasons - is distributed between all skaters (includes all forwards and defense) as well as forwards, defense and goalies separately.

Click on the buttons below to move from one chart to the next. As suggested by the summary statistics above, the distributions are very similar in shape.

Finally, the table below shows the percentage of NHL players who play different number of seasons during their careers. For example, 4.13% of NHL goalies play in 10 different regular seasons. The data in the table is also displayed in the chart below for forwards, defense and goalies.

The tables below show summary statistics for playoff career length. Similarly to regular season, the differences between various player positions are very small although goalies appear to have slightly shorter playoff careers than skaters. A likely reason is that backup goalies who play few games during the regular season seldom get to play in the playoffs.

If the majority of regular season careers are short, the same must hold for the playoff careers. The charts below show playoff career distributions for all skaters (includes all forwards and defensemen), forwards, defensemen and goalies.

Click on the buttons below to move from one chart to the next. As suggested by the summary statistics above, the distributions are very similar in shape, although the percentage of goalies who never play in the playoffs is higher than for forwards and defensemen.

Finally, the table below shows the percentage of NHL players who play during different number of playoff seasons during their careers. For example, 11.79% of NHL goalies play only during one playoff campaign. The data in the table is also displayed in the chart below for forwards, defense and goalies.

Career length is defined as the sum of regular season / playoff seasons during which the player played in at least one NHL game.

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 length.