|
Does Birthday Month Predict NHL Success? |
|
|
|
|
|
In the 1980s, psychologist Roger Barnsley was at a junior hockey game, when his wife revealed an interesting tidbit to him from the game program. A majority of the players in the game were born in January, February, and March. After a great deal of research, Barnsley published a paper on the idea of “relative age,” in that those born earlier in the year would be more likely to have success in hockey.
Barnsley found that once you look past the pee wee age group, there are significantly more hockey players born in the first quarter of the year than there are the second, more in the second than third, and more in the third than fourth. The reason this occurs is that the cutoff date for hockey in most countries is January 1. Therefore, a player who was born on January 1 will be much bigger, stronger, more coordinated, and generally more developed than someone born December 31 – almost a full year later – yet still playing at the same level. The January birthday will receive many more opportunities than the others, because of the developmental differences. Because of the extra practice time and perhaps the selection to a higher-level team, they will receive better coaching and more resources to develop their skills. By the time they have been playing for five or six years, they actually will be the better players, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In his bestselling book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell discussed this phenomenon, and suggested that a similar outcome would occur when looking at players in the professional ranks. Rather than wait for a psychological study to be performed on this, I took the liberty of running some numbers on a smaller scale, and here is what I came up with based on country of origin for the top 15 or 20 scorers in the NHL by country of origin (as listed on NHL.com):
Canada USA Russia Sweden Finland Czech
Q1 4 4 3 3 5 7
Q2 7 2 4 3 1 4
Q3 6 5 6 3 5 4
Q4 3 9 2 6 4 3
Out of six countries (USA, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Finland, and Czech Republic), the Czech Republic is the only country in which more players were born in the first quarter of the year than any other part. In fact, the United States has nine of its leading 20 scorers born in the last quarter of the year, and Canada has the majority of its scorers born in the middle of the year.
So what does this suggest about the idea of this birthday phenomenon? Well for starters, it shows that by the time a player reaches a professional level, the birthday phenomenon is nonexistent. There’s no reason not to believe that the month of birth indeed has an effect on a youth player or a young pee wee or bantam player developing their talents.
But to suggest that the month of birth directly affects a player’s professional chances seems to be both wrong and unfair to those that have worked so hard to reach the pinnacle of their sport.
Blogger •"The Psychology of Hockey" • 
Join the Discussion:
»