When Are NHL Forwards at Their Peak? When Do They Start to Decline? The Metrics Give Us the Answers
In the piece below, we’ll take a look at forward trends by every age, starting in the 2007-08 season up to the present. The sample includes over 6,000 player seasons.
The stats we’ll be examining are: goals per 60 (G/60), primary assists per 60 (1A/60), points per 60 (P/60), time on ice per game (TOI/GP), and shooting percentage (SH%).
The Data
Let’s first start with goals per 60 by age:
Spoiler alert, but goals per 60 shows the most obvious decline of any metric here.
Forwards are at their peak in their mid-twenties. There’s an increase from their teen years, then a decrease once they hit their thirties and beyond.
Let’s look at a specific player here: Steven Stamkos.
He’s a 99th-percentile example, but he’s worth looking at. Interestingly, he became a superstar producer before his 20th birthday. Scoring 51 goals for a Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy just two seasons after being drafted, his excellence was evident.
The early 2010s were dominated by Stamkos before he mellowed out a bit. However, his game aged well after that point. He’s seeing a bit of a decline now, though.
Primary assists take a bit longer to drop off, as shown below:
There’s a consistent increase until these players reach the age of 22, then they stay there for a bit.
It’s only until they’re a few years into their thirties that the decline starts.
I picked Nicklas Backstrom for the specific player example:
