Survivor Effects: If a Player plays 82 Games this Year, how many will he play next year?
by Hawerchuk on Sep 3, 2010 9:00 AM EDT
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PrintA player who plays 82 games in a single season is a very durable one, but the risk of significant injuries is so high in the NHL that we expect him to play a lot fewer games, on average, in the following season:
If a player is under 30, he'll play 73 games, on average, in his next season. If he's over 30, the average is 69 games.
Of course, averages are deceptive here compared to medians. If we look at the distribution of games missed among players 20-29, we can see that most players will play more than 73 games:
In fact, the 50th percentile is 78 games played, and 2/3 of players will play 73 games or more. It's the 5% who missed half the season or more who drag everyone else down. Survivorship in the NHL is actually slightly worse than what I've shown here - some players play 82 games and follow it up with zero games the following season, either because they have an incredibly serious injury (or even die) or go play in a different league. So I've left out all of the zeros in this analysis.
Bottom line: if a player plays 82 games in a season and he's under 30, odds are he'll come very close to playing every game the following season.
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Interesting stats. It does look like injury history matter. My guess about the Sedin’s good health is related to how they play the game. Their game tend to be slow things down with a lot of short passes and cycling, which means they are rarely involved in high-speed open-ice hit that lead of a lot of concussions. And they are read the ice so well that they seem to know where every player is on the ice all the time and therefore rarely gets blindsided.
Problem with this logic
A player that cycles a lot is far more likely to be victimized by boarding penalties, and illegal checking from behind. It’s also damn hard on the back muscles and spinal column as a result of all the grinding they have to do. Mats Sundin was durable for a long time too as a result of his work with the low cycle game, but I think some of it just has to do with being physically imposing, in good shape, and aware of what’s going on around you.
The other problem with that comment about the Sedins and durability based on recent history is Daniel Sedin. He only played 63 games last season. Missed time with a broken foot, and then he missed a game with a BACK injury.
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."
- Sir Winston Churchill
I'm pretty sure he's talking about the Leafs.
Yes, one size doesn’t fit all. The number of hits a player takes surely reduces his expected future games played – though the Sedins don’t get hit very much. There are many factors – size, injury history. But we’re talking about aggregates here.
As for your explanation, I don’t buy it…And even if you’re exactly correct, the plural of anecdote is not data.
if you don’t focus on individual players like Sedins, what’s a more general explanation of the high number of games played followed by a 82-game season? The sample size is pretty big to say it’s just coincidence, right?
Definitely not a coincidence.
I think the best way to think about it is that hockey has mostly catastrophic injuries. But short of catastrophic injuries, players who have the ability to stay in the lineup in one year retain it in the next.
I realize the part about anecdotal evidence
just not entirely sure that it makes sense to break down the Sedin’s game to that level of detail in looking for causes behind their durability. There’s more than one way to interpret the way they play as leaving them more or less susceptible to serious injury.
On the whole your point seems sound.
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."
- Sir Winston Churchill
I'm pretty sure he's talking about the Leafs.
by Steve Burtch on Sep 8, 2010 10:17 PM EDT up reply actions
The broken foot was basically an accident (shot in the foot by a teammate), and other than that he’s been relatively healthy. And I think they do more short passes than along the board cycling, which means they are not along the board. The key here is probably being very aware of what’s happening on the ice and get to the open ice before your opponent does. They do a lot of one-touch stuff and unexpected passes that opponents simply don’t have many opportunities to hit them, especially if you’re talking about the injury-inducing type of hits.
Theoretically
being a foot or two away from the boards would leave you more open to catastrophic boarding than being right against the boards.
Either way, I agree with the concluding statement about the odds of a player playing roughly a full season if he did the prior year and is under 30 years of age.
As for anecdotal reference points, I don’t particularly see a major issue in countering one anecdote with another if we’re looking at specifics… which was all I was intending. I had no designs on refuting the original point Gabe was making.
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."
- Sir Winston Churchill
I'm pretty sure he's talking about the Leafs.
by Steve Burtch on Sep 8, 2010 10:15 PM EDT up reply actions
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