Sports Business Blog - 2006 NHL Draft

2006 NHL Draft by height and weight

fortheinfo — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 17:27:36 -0400

Now we're starting to get into the meat of the numbers: height and weight. Yes, there is an NHL Draft pun in there. We're going to start off with the average height of the drafted players. I broke it into inches and the grouped them together. Notice the standard bell curve for the height:

The next graph shows the player's height by the position they were listed in for the 2006 NHL draft:

2006 NHL Draft by age of player and country of birth

fortheinfo — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 17:54:35 -0400

All the numbers came together, so here are the first three graphs of the 2006 NHL Draft. Again, I don't know why the NHL doesn't make the information easier to work with.

Our first graph shows the age of the players in a simple bar graph. To accomplish this I didn't go by months in age, but by years in age of the drafted players:

The next graph is very interesting. It shows the draft picks sorted by the position in which they were picked along with their age in months. Notice how the draft picks get older as the draft gets to the end.

2006 NHL Draft by the Numbers

fortheinfo — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 15:01:06 -0400

As I have said before, I'm not a die hard hockey fan. You'll see me in front of the TV for the NFL draft, but the NHL draft? Forget it. What I do find fascinating about the NHL draft is the number of players and where they come from. Does any other United States league draft so many foreign players?

Anyway, if you go over to the 2006 NHL Draft Tracker you can find the draft picks by round and you can even sort the columns. Too bad that don't make that data available to you in a format you can massage.

I went ahead and made an Excel spreadsheet that lists all the draft picks. You can even download it and play with it yourself. I've created some interesting graphs with the data that I will post in the coming days. Here's the breakdown: