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Blue Jackets open season with one of the youngest rosters in the NHL

October 13, 2016, 12:52 PM ET [18 Comments]
Paul Berthelot
Columbus Blue Jackets Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
When the Blue Jackets submitted their roster on Tuesday evening they officially had the youngest roster in the NHL. However after sending 18 year old Pierre-Luc Dubois to the QMJHL and recalling 22 year old Alexander Wennberg, the Toronto Maple Leafs passed the Jackets as the youngest team in the league.

This youth movement has seemingly been in plan the whole off-season. The Jackets got rid of players like Fedor Tyutin, Jared Boll and Gregory Campbell, all players aged 30 and older, and replaced them with players like Zach Werenski, Josh Anderson and Lukas Sedlak, all players aged 23 and under.

These young players are going to play a big part in this season for the Jackets. Take a look at project lines for the game tonight against the Bruins. There is youth up and down the line-up with many in key spots.

*Player age in brackets, age according to HockeyDB

Jenner (23) – Dubinsky (30) – Atkinson (27)
Saad (23) – Gagner (27) – Foligno (28)
Hartnell (34) – Wennberg (22) – Bjorkstrand (21)
Calvert (26) – Karlsson (23) – Anderson (22)

Werenski (19) – Jones (22)
Murray (23) – Savard (25)
Johnson (29) – Nutivaara (22)

Sergei Bobrovsky (28)
Curtis McElhinney (33)

Lukas Sedlak (23), Scott Harrington (23) and Dalton Prout (26) are the expected scratches.

The Jackets have just three players over the age of 30, one of which is the back-up goalie. They have 11 players 23 and under, four of whom are defencemen, including the top pair.

This has become a common theme across the NHL. Teams like Arizona and Toronto are icing line-ups with upwards of five rookies. Taking a step back it’s easy to see why teams are doing this. The cap has not increased like expected and more teams than ever are up against the cap. Young players are limited in what they can earn because they are bound by entry level contracts. At the top of the draft the top players will get paid large amounts in bonuses but after that most players are making close to the league minimum.

These players have been extremely helpful for the Jackets, where most of the veterans on the roster are locked up to big money deals.

The other big reason the league is trending this direction is many people around the game are starting to realize that players peak performance is earlier than expected. The common theme used to be that players peaked around 27-28 years old and held that production into their early 30’s. However there has been plenty of research that suggests player’s peak more around 24-25. They then maintain a similar level of play though their late 20’s before starting to decline around 30.

Eric Tulsky was one of the first ones to dive into when players peak. He wrote this piece back in 2014 showing that players 5 on 5 points per 60 peaks at age 24. He also showed how much of that scoring players maintain as they age.

On average, players retain about 90% of their scoring through age 29, but the drop from there is pretty sharp -- they hit 80% at age 31, 70% at age 32-33, and 60% at age 35.


In a follow up post Tulsky looked at how certain types of players aged, specifically goal scorers vs. playmakers. He found that both goals and assists per 60 peaks around age 24, but goals have a much sharper drop off. Teams should be starting their goal scoring prospects in the NHL the minute they should signs of being ready. That allows those players to learn the NHL game in their pre-peak so that they are at their best when they turn 24. This is what the Blue Jackets are doing with Oliver Bjorkstrand. They have in the line-up now at 21; he has a couple seasons to learn and adjust to the NHL before he turns 24 and is at his peak.

In his third piece in this series, Tulsky discussed Corsi and how it changes with age. He found that it follows the same pattern as scoring, peaking at 24 before starting to decline. The big takeaway from this post was Tulsky found that defencemen follow the same trends as forwards. They perhaps do not take longer than forwards to develop,

There is a widely-held perception that defensemen take longer to mature than forwards do, but it's not entirely clear that this is true. It is true that fewer defensemen are in the NHL at ages 19-20 (by a factor of about 50 percent), but the peak observed performance does not appear to be later.


He goes on to acknowledge the reasons as to why that may be. Perhaps it takes longer for defensemen to earn their coaches trust, perhaps there is selection bias and just those mature defencemen are chosen, or perhaps that young defencemen are eased into the NHL with offensive zone starts against weaker opposition.

Regardless of the reasons behind it, this gives me even more optimism for Zach Werenski. We know what to expect points wise from him, and now have even more confidence that he will be successful in his own zone.

For those familiar with hockey analytics this is nothing new. What is interesting looking at the Jackets roster is many of their players have yet to reach that peak age. This is what makes this year a very important one for development, and why this team will be exciting to follow even if the wins are not there. The Jackets window for contention should be when all those players are at their peak, which will be in a season or two. They are not quite there yet which is why many are projecting a poor season but give the kids some time and the Jackets are going to be a very strong team very soon.

For now let’s not worry about the future, let’s all sit back and enjoy what promises to be a fun and exciting season of Blue Jackets hockey.

You can follow me on Twitter @PaulBerthelot
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