Friday Quick Graphs are (initially) intended to revisit some of the better, potentially more-significant work I’ve posted over the past year on my Tumblr page (if you want to beat me to some of them, take a look at benwendorf.tumblr.com).

I did a similar GIF one week ago, using defensemen, in an effort to understand how a player’s playing time evolves over their career. Taking NHL player data from 2007-08 through 2011-12 and identifying year-t0-year change, I’m able to create a hypothetical forward that plays from age 18 to age 40, and how that player’s ice time would change.

For frame of reference, the hypothetical player is the dark blue triangle, the light, dotted triangle is the league average across the player population, and the light blue triangle is the league high in each situation.

There are some similarities to the defensemen GIF, primarily that player’s are given powerplay minutes early, but grow into penalty kill minutes. Unlike defensemen, though, forward TOI decreases uniformly at all strengths, whereas defensemen tend to retain some of their penalty kill time.

As with the previous post, it’s worth pointing out that a player playing from age 18 to age 40 would be a pretty unique, talented player, so this model is really just to demonstrate change.