Most hits occur along the boards. No big surprise there. But how many hits is "most"? I classified any hit inside the red area below as an open-ice hit:
Approximately 75% of all hits occur within 10 feet of the net or the boards, while less than 5% happen in "open-ice." After the jump, the league leaders in open-ice hits…
This table includes both 2007-08 and 2008-09. There isn’t much overlap between the two lists – the hitters are big defensemen and aggressive forwards; the guys who get hit include a lot more playmakers and scorers. I was surprised to see both Darcy Tucker and Sean Avery in the top 12 for taking hits – perhaps there are a lot of players in the league who are gunning for them in open ice.
Hit For | # | Hit Against | # | |
Dustin Brown | 47 | Alexander Ovechkin | 46 | |
Douglas Murray | 39 | Evgeni Malkin | 37 | |
Keith Ballard | 33 | Sidney Crosby | 31 | |
Alexander Ovechkin | 30 | Dustin Brown | 26 | |
Garnet Exelby | 28 | Derek Roy | 22 | |
Brooks Orpik | 27 | Ales Hemsky | 21 | |
Dion Phaneuf | 27 | Ryan Kesler | 21 | |
Cory Sarich | 26 | Tuomo Ruutu | 21 | |
James Wisniewski | 25 | Alexander Semin | 20 | |
David Backes | 25 | Valtteri Filppula | 20 | |
Toni Lydman | 24 | Darcy Tucker | 19 | |
Ed Jovanovski | 23 | Sean Avery | 19 | |
Niklas Kronwall | 23 | Scottie Upshall | 19 | |
Ruslan Salei | 22 | Matt Stajan | 19 | |
Chris Phillips | 21 | Brooks Laich | 19 | |
Dan Girardi | 21 | Loui Eriksson | 19 | |
Martin Hanzal | 21 | Chad LaRose | 18 | |
Dan Hamhuis | 20 | Mike Richards | 18 | |
Freddy Meyer | 20 | Devin Setoguchi | 18 | |
Ryan Malone | 20 | Alex Kovalev | 17 | |
Brent Seabrook | 20 | Corey Perry | 17 | |
Anton Volchenkov | 19 | Mikhail Grabovski | 17 | |
Shane Doan | 18 | Mike Ribeiro | 16 | |
Hal Gill | 18 | Erik Cole | 16 | |
Brendan Witt | 18 | Patrick O’Sullivan | 16 | |
Andreas Lilja | 18 | Maxime Talbot | 16 | |
Colton Orr | 18 | |||
Steve Ott | 18 | |||
Tuomo Ruutu | 18 |