Average NHL career length.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by darthma

An average is the same as a mean, and a median is a median.

This is not true. Both the mean and the median are two different types of averages. In colloquial usage, most people will assume you're talking about the mean when you say "average", but it's an important distinction to make when you're talking about statistics.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

I don't think too many just stay in the AHL, I could be wrong but I think there is a lot of mov't around different leagues.

This fella coaches my buddy's son so I picked him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Brigley


He has been all over the hockey map.

That's pretty much how it seems to go these days with the AHL becoming more of a development league. Years ago though players would often stay in a pro league such as the AHL or the WHL for many years often with the same team. In those days a star player could make pretty much the same as an average NHL player so they didn't have the impetus to go to the NHL or Europe.

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by AC

They only cancel each other if there are equivalent numbers of each, which I highly doubt.

There are a tonne of players who get just a couple of games in the NHL. If they even came close to cancelling the average wouldn't be so low as shown above (248 games).

Originally Posted by darthma

An average is the same as a mean, and a median is a median.

The Alius and Brodeurs will only cancel each other out if you have a normal (bell-shaped) distribution. The challenge here is that we have a left-skewed distribution, so there are more Alius than Brodeurs.

Yeah, I didn't quite word that correctly. There are way more Alius than Brodeurs. However, Brodeurs are much further from the mean than Alius, so there is a bit more balance in the end.

The main point was that "average Length of career" has to include everyone, or else, what are you really getting the average of?

[Bourque's Twin]

Originally Posted by Flabbibulin

How common are career AHLers? Could a player ever be in the AHL for 10+ years and barely get a sniff of the NHL?

Don Cherry was a career AHLer.

He played 17 seasons in the AHL, EPHL, and CPHL.

He played 1 game in the NHL during his entire 17 seasons, and it was during his rookie season. It was a playoff game for the Bruins.

He also played 41 games in the WHL (World Hockey League) for the Vancouver Canucks in 1968-69.

That's the definition of a CAREER AHLer who BARELY gets a sniff of the NHL, lol.

[Fighting Banana Slug]

Originally Posted by Bourque's Twin

Don Cherry was a career AHLer.

He played 17 seasons in the AHL, EPHL, and CPHL.

He played 1 game in the NHL during his entire 17 seasons, and it was during his rookie season. It was a playoff game for the Bruins.

He also played 41 games in the WHL (World Hockey League) for the Vancouver Canucks in 1968-69.

That's the definition of a CAREER AHLer who BARELY gets a sniff of the NHL, lol.

Sure, but the point is, how do you treat that 1 game in determining the "average" career. Count as 1 year? not counted at all?

I think the median number would be very interesting and more telling. As most have suggested, a large number of players getting a cup of coffee would pull that number well below the average.

[darthma]

Originally Posted by You Need a Thneed

Yeah, I didn't quite word that correctly. There are way more Alius than Brodeurs. However, Brodeurs are much further from the mean than Alius, so there is a bit more balance in the end.

The main point was that "average Length of career" has to include everyone, or else, what are you really getting the average of?

Yes. I agree. (And I'm also extremely embarrassed about average vs. mean). And my main point (in the post prior to that) was supposed to be that the average of 5.5 yrs in the OP was probably an over-estimate because it seems to based on the mean number of seasons played (5.65). In the quanthockey analysis, Don Cherry would count as 1 season played (I think).

[Jay Random]

The length of careers in professional sports, like many other things in life, roughly follows a Pareto distribution: many small values and only a few large ones. It is meaningless to talk about the ‘average’ of a Pareto distribution. The arithmetic mean can, of course, be calculated, but unlike the mean of a bell curve or certain other distributions, it doesn’t tell you anything about the underlying data. (In fact, in certain cases, the arithmetic mean of a Pareto distribution can actually be infinity!) You can meaningfully talk about the harmonic mean or geometric mean of a Pareto distribution, but those aren’t the numbers that are being used here.

It would be very interesting to see what is the harmonic mean or geometric mean of NHL career lengths. Unfortunately, I haven’t got the time to compile all the data and work it out for myself. Any statistics geeks interested in taking up the challenge?

[troutman]

I have been confusing mean with mode:

http://www.purplemath.com/modules/meanmode.htm

The "mean" is the "average" you're used to, where you add up all the numbers and then divide by the number of numbers. The "median" is the "middle" value in the list of numbers. To find the median, your numbers have to be listed in numerical order, so you may have to rewrite your list first. The "mode" is the value that occurs most often. If no number is repeated, then there is no mode for the list.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by Bourque's Twin

Don Cherry was a career AHLer.

He played 17 seasons in the AHL, EPHL, and CPHL.

He played 1 game in the NHL during his entire 17 seasons, and it was during his rookie season. It was a playoff game for the Bruins.

He also played 41 games in the WHL (World Hockey League) for the Vancouver Canucks in 1968-69.

That's the definition of a CAREER AHLer who BARELY gets a sniff of the NHL, lol.

The WHL was the Western Hockey League. Here's one of the stars from that league. Guyle Fielder played mostly for Seattle.

He spent 15 dazzling seasons in Seattle, affixing his name to that aforementioned WHL scoring champion trophy nine times. He became the first pro player anywhere to accumulate 100 points in a season, totaling 122 for the Americans during the 1956-57 season.
Fielder, 75, remains one of just three hockey players to surpass 2,000 points in a pro career, later joined by NHL mainstays Gordie Howe and Wayne Gretzky.

Fielder went to the Red Wings after his groundbreaking 100-point season, but immediately asked to return to the Americans after making the team but playing sparingly. The minimum NHL contract paid the same as he was making in Seattle, $7,500 per season, so there was no financial incentive to stay.
"I said, 'I came here to play hockey, not sit on the bench,' " he said.

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/articl...er-1198428.php

http://www.greatesthockeylegends.com...e-fielder.html

He spent 21 years in the WHL.

http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/p...y.php?pid=1666

[albertGQ]

I always thought the average was around 3.5 years.

[Buff]

Originally Posted by Flabbibulin

How common are career AHLers? Could a player ever be in the AHL for 10+ years and barely get a sniff of the NHL?

Look at these guys:
http://ahlhalloffame.com/games-played-p139035

Most of them didn't get much playing time in the NHL. Jody Gage had 60+ NHL games, but his two highest NHL game totals in one season was 16 and 31. Terry Virtue had only 5 NHL games total. Some of those guys did get quite a few games played, like Nolan Baumgartner, but he had one season of 70 games, the rest were all 12 games or less, mostly only single digits. But that was years ago. These days guys spend time developing in the AHL then they find somewhere else to play because NHL teams want their young guys developing with their AHL affiliates.

[N-E-B]

Why should the guys who only play a game or two be discounted? They absolutely should be included as that shows just how hard it is to make the NHL, let alone be able to maintain a meaningful career in the league. Removing them skews the numbers, keeping them in does not.

[FlamingHomer]

Originally Posted by Vulcan

The WHL was the Western Hockey League. Here's one of the stars from that league. Guyle Fielder played mostly for Seattle.





http://www.seattlepi.com/news/articl...er-1198428.php

http://www.greatesthockeylegends.com...e-fielder.html

He spent 21 years in the WHL.

http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/p...y.php?pid=1666

That brings back memories. I remember him coming into Victoria to play against our Maple Leafs and always light it up. Our star was Milan Marcetta at the time. Another player who only got a short stint in the NHL.

[Arsonist22]

How are they classifying players like Baertschi, who have played parts of three seasons but played less than 82 games. Are they counted as having played 3 seasons or 1?

[#-3]

Yep, for every 20 year Iginla there are, five 1 or 2 year Aliu/Dawes/Hale........ and there are is a pretty healthy sized group of guys like David moss who play 5-10 years then burn out.