ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
1
NHL Goalie Data Analysis
2
3
Back in the spring of 2007, my ordinary life in southern New Jersey was at a crossroads. My high school graduation was imminent and I had a BIG decision to make. At the time, I had been thriving playing competitive junior ice hockey in NJ, which warranted several trips up to Canada to tryout for legitimate junior hockey teams. My dream was to be a starting goalie in the NHL, and moving to Canada to work my way up the system was step #1. Cut to 2023 - I have not played in the NHL, nor did I ever move to Canada. Despite various hockey opportunities, I decided to go to college and shift my aspirations toward a degree and career in television and film production. (That's a whole other story!) Looking back, I have always wondered if I made the right decision. Could I have ended up as a starting goalie in the NHL?! This data analysis looks at the few men who did become NHL starting goalies. My goal is to provide myself with some sollace - even not considered the countless unmeasurable factors such as injury, luck, etc - what are the odds of someone from New Jersey, born in 1989 becoming an NHL starting goalie?
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Process & Results
11
12
1. I imported basic data from the NHL website for all goalies who played in the NHL between 2011-2023, assuming that it would've taken me a minimum of 4 years out of high school to work my way onto an NHL roster.
13
14
2. I cleaned the data, removing any unneccesary metrics such as performance stats, handedness, height and weight. I wanted to focus on 2 main areas: location and age.
15
16
3. I filtered the data to only include goalie who started a minimum of 1 game during that time period. This eliminated 30 goalies, who were either emergency backups or only came in as relief for a game or two.
17
## This showed me that only 243 goalies started a game between 2011-2023. That's an average of ~8 per team over the 13 year span - less than 1 starting goalie/year. This isn't too surprising since teams typically use one starting goalie unless they are injuried or need a night off; however, it does shine a light on how low the odds are of becoming a starting goalie in the NHL.
18
19
20
4. I then sorted the remaining 243 goalies with (1 min. GS) by country to determine the following breakdown:
21
22
CountryGoalies/CountryAvg Population (2011-2023)NHL Goalie : Population
## Population estimates for 2023 -- https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/
23
BGR16,862,8266,862,826
## Population data for 2011 -- https://www.medindia.net/health_statistics/population/worldpopulation.asp
24
CAN9336,540,687392,911
25
CHE48,226,1492,056,537AbbrCountry2023 Population2011 PopulationWorld Population
26
CZE1310,336,298795,100BGRBulgaria6,687,7177,037,93520232011
27
DEU482,300,24520,575,061CANCanada38,781,29134,300,0838,045,311,4477,073,125,425
28
DNK25,727,1832,863,592CHESwitzerland8,796,6697,655,628
29
FIN245,404,203225,175CZECzechia10,495,29510,177,300Average7,559,218,436
30
GBR165,391,98265,391,982DEUGermany83,294,63381,305,856
31
KAZ218,564,3229,282,161DNKDenmark5,910,9135,543,453
32
LVA42,010,896502,724FINFinland5,545,4755,262,930
33
RUS14141,263,26910,090,233GBRUnited Kingdom67,736,80263,047,162
34
SVK35,639,1441,879,715KAZKazakhstan19,606,63317,522,010
35
SWE269,857,937379,151LVALatvia1,830,2112,191,580
36
USA52326,922,0146,286,962RUSRussia144,444,359138,082,178
37
SVKSlovakia5,795,1995,483,088
38
## The majority of goalies in the NHL are born in Canada and the United States. However, Finland and Sweden had the most NHL starting goalies per capita. Only 1 in 6,286,962 people in the USA was an NHL starting goalie between 2011-2023.SWESweden10,612,0869,103,788
39
USAUnited States339,996,563313,847,465
40
41
42
## Sorting through the location data further - only 2 NHL starting goalies during that time period were born in New Jersey.
43
44
5. I then realized that if I had pursued a career in the NHL, I most likely wouldn't have started a game until 2011 (assuming I spent 4 years playing in juniors and minor leagues). So I filtered the data based on "1st Season" to determine:
45
## Only 158 goalies (of the 243 total) began their NHL career in 2011 or later.
46
47
6. I then sorted the 243 goalies by their birth year to determine:
48
## Only 11 were born in 1989 (my birth year); and out of those 11 goalies, only 3 were born in the USA and none from New Jersey.
49
50
7. The dataset also includes draft data, so I decided to look into that a little further. The NHL draft eligibility for US born players is 18-20 years old. So I filtered the data to determine:
51
## Only 20 goalies were drafted between 2007-2009 (when I would have been eligible); and of those 20 goalies, only 3 were US born.
52
53
8. I then went back to the breakdown per country and decided to chart the data using Tableau. In doing so, I noticed that of the 145 North American goalies the majority seem to be born north of where I was born. So I added a column and input the latitudes for the US players within the same lat region as NJ. I then was able to determine:
54
## Only 8 goalies were born south of my hometown (Riverton, NJ - 40.0115° N). Since the United States is also the southern-most country with NHL starting goalies during this time period, it became clear that 235 NHL starting goalies were born north of my birthplace.
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
Summary
77
Could I have become an NHL starting goalie?

It was certainly possible. But based on the data analysis, the odds were not in my favor. Out of an average of 7.5 billion people in the world, only 243 were able to live their dream of starting a game as a goalie in the NHL. That's 0.000003% of the population. In less eloquent terms than he would convey, Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers brings up the notion of time and place being the key to becoming an outlier. I have to say that I agree with this theory. Based on this data analysis, I was not meant to be a starting goalie in the NHL, simply by being born in New Jersey in 1989. Only 11 starting goalies in NHL history were born in 1989, and only 2 goalies between 2011-2023 were born in New Jersey. In fact, 97% of the NHL goalies who started a game between 2011-2024 were born at a northern latitude compared to my birthplace of Riverton, NJ. During my NHL draft-eligible years (2007-2009), only 3 of the 672 drafted players were US-born goalies. Although 27% of the starting goalies in the analysis were undrafted, I can only imagine the struggle of continuing the pursuit as an undrafted player - an obstacle that I would have undoubtedly encountered had I pursued a career. Only 158 goalies began their career between 2011-2023 for what is now 32 NHL teams, meaning that only ~5 new goalies started per team over the last 13 years. I could stay up at night thinking "what if," but I prefer to acknowledge the data in front of me and rest assured that I made the right decision.
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100