NHL Average Retirement Age between 1917/18 - 2005/06 Seasons

This section looks at how retirement age has been distributed during NHL history (How was this calculated?). 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 age and the vertical axis (y-axis) has the number of players. The red columns show the number of players for each age group. For example, looking at the first chart, during the NHL history there have been 107 skaters who were 35 years old when they played their last regular season NHL game.

The tables below show summary statistics for the different player positions. The difference between the average retirement age of forwards and defense is non-existent, whereas goalies play their last game roughly one year later than the skaters.

Gordie Howe, of course, is the oldest player ever to have played in the NHL. Contrary to the table above, he had actually turned 52 by the time he played his last game for the Hartford Whalers in 1980, but due to the methodology chosen here, he is listed as 51 years old.

Among the defensemen, Doug Harvey is currently listed as the oldest defense man, but he is clinging to his title only because the data set stops at the 2005/06 season. In time, Chris Chelios will overtake him.

The honor of the oldest goaltender goes to Moe Roberts, who played one period for the Chicago Black Hawks during the 1951/52 season. At the time, Moe Roberts was an assistant trainer for the Black Hawks and was called on the ice to replace injured Harry Lumley. His previous NHL game had been 18 years earlier for the New York Americans.

The charts below show how NHL player retirement age was distributed between the 1917/18 - 2005/06 seasons. Charts are shown separately for each player position.

To include the passage of time into the analysis, we break down the distribution to smaller, meaningful time periods and compare them to understand the effect of time. Clicking the buttons below allows you to switch between distributions constructed for decades starting from the 1950s.

Retirement distribution is gradually shifting to the right as players and goalies are playing to an older age.

Some indication of this can already be seen on the charts constructed for 2000/01 - 2005/06 seasons, and when we add players who we know retired in their 40s such as Teppo Numminen, Gary Roberts and Mark Recchi, we can start to sketch what the distribution for 2000s will look like once complete.

The table below lists the percentage of NHL players who played their last NHL game at various ages. The data in the table is also displayed in the chart below for forwards, defense and goalies. For example, 7.71% of NHL defensemen retired when they were 25 years old.

A limitation of the distributions above is that they contain every single player who ever played in the league. As a consequence, they are a poor presentation for players whose careers span over multiple years and hundreds of games.

To look at how the retirement age is split between experienced NHLers, I have constructed another set of charts for players with long careers. Here, I have also extended the dataset to include all seasons up until 2008-09, i.e. only players who played during the 2009-10 season are excluded.

The first chart shows the retirement age for skaters, who appeared in at least 500 career games. The second chart shows a distribution for goaltenders with a minimum of 200 games under their belt.

Chart above includes 1042 skaters whose average retirement age is 34.0 years.

Chart above includes 148 goalies whose average retirement age is 34.6 years.

Often the best ideas come from my readers. Just the other day, I received an e-mail where the writer (he or she didn't include a name so I am unable to give proper credit) suggested doing a retirement age distribution on forwards and defensemen, who at some point during their careers finished in top 10 on the NHL scoring list (for forwards and defensemen respectively).

This is a great idea since it takes us directly to the on-going controversy regarding contracts of star players such as Ilya Kovalchuk and Marian Hossa.

The first chart shows the retirement age for forwards, who managed to crack the top 10 scoring list between 1967-68 and 2008-09. A total of 152 different forwards finished in top 10 scoring, and 117 of them did not play during the 2009-10 season and are thus considered to have retired. Their average retirement age 35.8 years.

The second chart displays the same data for defensemen. The chart includes 91 retired defensemen, whose average retirement age 34.4 years.

The age of each player is determined by calculating the number of days between the player birth date and the December 31st of the season when player appeared in his last regular season NHL game. This difference (age of the player measured in days) is then divided by 365 to convert it into years. Summary statistics (MIN, MAX, Average and Median) have been calculated using the described methodology.

To construct the charts, player age is rounded downwards to nearest integer to place each player in their respective retirement age group. In other words, if the player age on the December 31st of his retirement season is 22.9 years, he will appear in the 22 year group.

A small number of players have been excluded from the data set, because their birth dates are unknown. Data used in the charts is available on separate data matrices for forwards, defense and goalies.