Monday, February 2, 2009

Fights per game since 1991

Several of you liked the recent post on NHL fighting frequency, but wanted to see an average fights/game number. The basic numbers I presented didn't account for the additional games played thanks to expansion and schedule tweaks.

Well, with a glove tap to commenter Leu' and the fine folks at the incredibly comprehensive dropyourgloves.com, here are the average fights per game each season since 1990:

1990-91 - 1.04
1991-92 - 1.02
1992-93 - 0.71
1993-94 - 0.85
1994-95 - 0.88
1995-96 - 0.80
1996-97 - 0.93
1997-98 - 0.87
1998-99 - 0.66
1999-00 - 0.57
2000-01 - 0.61
2001-02 - 0.70
2002-03 - 0.56
2003-04 - 0.70
2004-05 - No season
2005-06 - 0.41
2006-07 - 0.44
2007-08 - 0.59
2008-09 - 0.70 (projected)

And here's the graph:



So there you have -- a pretty clear downward trend, although one with a clear upswing in the past two years. Even this season's spike will still result in fewer fights per game than we saw ten+ years ago.

This doesn't tell us whether fighting is good or bad or indifferent. But can we at least all agree that fighting has been dropping over the past two decades? Even you, Damien?




3 comments:

  1. I never realized that in the early 90s there was at least one fight per game. Despite the recent increase fighting is dropping off in the league. I can't say I miss them.

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  2. Obviously the 2008-09 number is a projection, and we all know the fights/game average usually drops while the season go ahead.
    But could we have a number about 2007-08 fights/game average at the end of January? This could give us a more significant projection for this year, isn't it?

    (I hope you could well understand what I wrote. Sorry for my english mistakes)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Facts and charts, 2 of my favourite things. Nice.

    ReplyDelete