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

This section looks at the career points 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 point leaders can be viewed in the stats section. Distributions for career goals and assists are analyzed on separate pages.

On each chart, the horizontal axis (x-axis) shows the number of points and the vertical axis (y-axis) the number of players. The red columns show the number of players in each points 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 137.18 and the average defense man 82.85 points during their careers. Wayne Gretzky and Ray Bourque hold the career records for the number of points for forwards and defensemen respectively.

The charts below show how career points are distributed between all skaters as well as forwards and defensemen separately. Each chart groups the number of points into 25 point buckets and shows the number of players that fall into each bucket. The first bucket (zero points) is an exception as it shows the number of players who didn't receive any points 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 with more than 25 points 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 (25 points or less) and high scoring careers (over 25 points) 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 with different number of points during their careers. For example, 14.77% of forwards don't get a single point during their careers and 35.37% get between 1 and 25 points. 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 has only 8.72 playoff points during his career. Median is zero for both forwards and defense, which means that over 50% of NHL players finish their careers without recording a single playoff point.

The charts below break down the playoff points into 10 point intervals. Similarly to regular season charts, I have split the distributions in two to make the distribution shapes for both low scoring (20 points or less) and high scoring (over 20 points) 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 have scored different number of points during their playoff careers. For example, 56.24% of NHL players don't record a single point during their playoff careers and 23.15% score between 1 and 10 points. The data in the table is also displayed in the chart below for forwards and defense.

QuantHockey: NHL All-Time Point Leaders

QuantHockey: Most Points 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 points.