I was going to title this one "Why you shouldn't give a 34-year old forward a 5-year, $20 million contract" but I chose not to. I decided not to specifically single out the team in my hometown and keep it more of a general discussion about the relationship between age and goals.
It's obvious that eventually a player's performance will start to decline as he gets older. But I was curious to know exactly what age that decline began and how old most players are when they hit their prime years, how long that lasts for, etc.
In order to form some conclusions I decided to put together a spreadsheet of the top 100 goal scorers of all-time and the number of goals they scored at each age. From there I was able to do some fancy formulas, sorting and graphs and well, here we are.
The above graph is more than a little messy to say the least. On the X-axis you have players ages ranging from 18 to 42 and on the Y-axis are goals scored. Each line on the graph represents one of the top 100 goal scorers. I was going to remove these lines and just show the averages but I thought it was interesting to see how certain players stand out above the rest. If you're familiar with the stats then right away you'll be able to spot Wayne, Mario, Espo, Gordie, Golden Brett, Teemu and others.
I've added in two lines to represent the averages. The dark blue line represents all players and the black line represents only the players who played that specific season. For example, 18 of the players played at least some portion of the regular season at age 18, totaling 320 goals. If you look at all players the average goals scored at 18 is 3.2 but if you just isolate the 18 then it goes way up to 17.8. You'll notice that the lines are virtually identical from age 22 through to 31 and then you can see where players start to retire.
So first some data and then I'll give you some interesting facts:
Of the top 100 goal scorers...
AT AGE 34...
2 scored 40-49 goals (Messier, Mullen)
22 scored 30-39 goals
17 scored 20-29 goals
AT AGE 35...
1 scored 50+ goals (Bucyk)
1 scored 40-49 goals (Selanne)
11 scored 30-39 goals
21 scored 20-29 goals
AT AGE 36...
3 scored 40+ goals (Selanne, Esposito, Shanahan)
9 scored 30-30 goals
14 scored 20-29 goals
AT AGE 37...
1 scored 40+ goals (Bucyk)
5 scored 30-39 goals (Sakic, Esposito, Beliveau, Gartner, Hull)
12 scored 20-29 goals
AT AGE 38...
2 scored 30+ goals (Hull, Bucyk)
9 scored 20-29 goals
AT AGE 39...
1 scored 30+ goals (Howe)
10 scored 20-29 goals
AT AGE 40...
1 scored 40+ goals (Howe)
1 scored 30-39 goals (Bucyk)
4 scored 20-29 goals
AT AGE 41...
1 scored 30+ goals (Howe)
1 scored 20-29 goals (Bucyk)
AT AGE 42...
1 scored 20+ goals (Howe)
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The top 100 goal scorers of all-time have 9 total 40+ goal seasons at age 34 or later:
Bucyk (2), Esposito, Howe, Messier, Mullen, Selanne (2), Shanahan
86% of all 40-goal seasons were put up by players 29 or younger.
91% of all 50+ goal seasons were put up by players 29 or younger.
Looking at 30+ goal seasons, here is how many of the top 100 goal scorers broke thirty at each age:
At 18: 4
At 19: 11
At 20: 29
At 21: 45
At 22: 56
At 23: 63
At 24: 61
At 25: 63
At 26: 72
At 27: 66
At 28: 57
At 29: 61
At 30: 46
At 31: 33
At 32: 30
At 33: 19
At 34: 24
At 35: 13
At 36: 12
At 37: 6
At 38: 2
At 39: 1
At 40: 2
At 41: 1
18-22: 145 seasons at 30+ goals
23-27: 325 seasons at 30+ goals
28-32: 227 seasons at 30+ goals
33-37: 74 seasons at 30+ goals
38-42: 6 seasons at 30+ goals
Total = 777 seasons at 30+ goals (average of 7.8 per player)
Only 61 of those seasons have come at age 34 or later and that number drops to 37 at 35 or later.
Here's a clearer look at the just the average goals scored by year:
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Looking at the graph it appears that the average star player breaks out at age 23, suffers a slight decline at 24/25 and reaches his peak again at 26. From there the averages decline consistently (with a couple small exceptions) from year-to-year.
At 29 the decline starts to become much more dramatic. An average 30-year old who is signed to a five-year deal coming off a thirty goal season is suddenly a 20-22 goal scorer in the final three years of that deal.
No doubt that in the past, Unrestricted Free Agents were overpaid for past performance and consistently underperformed. When you look at this graph and think about the fact that the UFA age was 31, it certainly makes a ton of sense. With the age dropping to 27 all of a sudden teams are able to sign players while they are still in their prime years but long-term deals very likely will mean disappointments on the back-half of the contracts.
Some other interesting points:
* The most under-rated and under-appreciated goal scorer of all-time is Mike Bossy. Bossy scored 573 goals in just TEN seasons. Here are his year-by-year totals: 53, 69, 51, 68, 64, 60, 51, 58, 61, 38. His average of 57 goals per year is far and away the best on the list. Second place is Gretzky with 45 goals per year, followed by Hull, Dionne and Lemieux at 41.
* Only two players set their career highs after the age of 31: Alex Delvecchio's 31-goal year at age 34 and John Bucyk's 51 at age 35.
* Fifteen players set their career high in goals at age 23, and 37 in total at or before the age of 23.
* Gretzky's last 40+ goal season was at age 29. After that season he only broke 30 twice.
* Gordie Howe's stats will likely never be duplicated. At age 40 he put up 44 goals. He followed that with seasons of 31 and 23. Of course he also put up 15 at age 51 (which is off the chart, literally).
Most goals scored by age:
At 18: Gretzky, 51
At 19: Gretzky, 55
At 20: Gretzky, 92
At 21: Gretzky, 71
At 22: Gretzky, 87
At 23: Lemieux, 85
At 24: Kurri, 71
At 25: Brett Hull, 72
At 26: Brett Hull, 86
At 27: Brett Hull, Nichols, 70
At 28: Esposito, 76
At 29: Esposito, McDonald, 66
At 30: Lemieux, 69
At 31: Esposito, 68
At 32: Esposito, 61
At 33: Jagr, 54
At 34: Messier, 47
At 35: Bucyk, 51
At 36: Selanne, 48
At 37: Bucyk, 40
At 38: Brett Hull, 37
At 39: Howe, 39
At 40: Howe, 44
At 41: Howe, 31
At 42: Howe, 23
Looking at that list you can really appreciate how amazing Selanne was this past season, how completely unreal Gretzky's stats were early in his career, how dominant Esposito was in his late 20s-early 30s and how Howe just didn't slow down.
Also, I expected to see some of the younger players putting up better production into their later 30s due to better workout regimes, diets, medical capabilities etc, but that really wasn't the case.
When you look at a chart like this the Vanek contract isn't as crazy as it first seemed to many. Why pay a player big money who is in the latter stages of his prime when you can try and get a player just entering his peak years? Of course the flaw in that theory is that when a team has a young star like Vanek you simply can't afford to lose him - it was a no-brainer for Buffalo to match.
In the old NHL, for the most-part as players got older they made more money. Now of course with the cap there is only so much money to go around. It's quite possible that we will start to see the salaries of young star players coming off their entry level contracts going through the roof which will mean less money for the 30+ group.
Are we going to see the money shifting gradually towards the players who are in their prime years? That will be an interesting trend to watch, especially when looking at deals that players like Parise and Cammalleri will sign over the summer.
One thing is for sure - I still have an extremely hard time understanding why a team would give a 34-year old forward a 5-year, $20 million contract.
If the overwhelming majority of the greatest goal scorers of all-time couldn't score 30 goals into their mid-30s is it really reasonable to expect that Jason Blake will?
Danny -
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