The NHL's Shift in Draft Priorities: Is Size Becoming Less Valued?

Selecting players in the National Hockey League (NHL) Draft has always been an inexact science. Players perceived as elite prospects often wash out, and there are notable cases of late-round selections breaking through as superstars.

Although getting picked higher in the draft often correlates to NHL success, the uncertainty in the process incentivizes reaching for players with firmly quantifiable characteristics. The process can take various forms, but focusing on a player's size is the simplest.

In a full-contact sport like hockey, size is an attractive quality so long as it does not sacrifice the player's speed. Larger players are likely to adjust quickly to the NHL game, and the strength that big players bring has applications on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ice.

At the same time, the NHL game is evolving in a way that could challenge that idea.

The sport has become faster and more wide-open in recent years. In every season between 2006-07 and 2017-18, the average goal output for a team in a given game always sat below three. As recently as 2003-04, that average was 2.57, its lowest level since 1955-56. That metric has been higher in the last four seasons, hovering between 3.11 and 3.18.

With the changes to a more wide-open style we are currently seeing in the NHL game in mind, this research aims to determine if teams around the league are less concerned with size than they have been in the past by examining players selected in the first round of the NHL Draft over the past twenty years.

The player pool for this research is the 611 players chosen in the first rounds between the 2005 and 2024 drafts.

We're focusing on players chosen in this round because they reflect who teams find most desirable instead of which players are available in a given year. 

We have divided the 20 drafts into four sections (2005-09, 2010-14, 2015-19, and 2023) to get more meaningful samples and better understand the progression in player size without becoming wrapped up in year-to-year volatility. Here is a quick summary of the movement in height and weight. (NHL Records, 2024)

This study focuses on the average height and weight of the players drafted and how often teams select size outliers—in either direction. 

We defined weight outliers as players listed at  ≥ 205 or ≤175 pounds. These numbers were selected because three of our four five-draft sections had average weights of approximately 190 pounds, and that number was used as a midpoint.

Below is a summary of how the frequency of those outliers changed over time. 

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The heights of most of the players fell within a comparatively narrow range, but we will also examine changes on that front over each five-year period.

The players drafted during this period's first round differ significantly from today's draftees. 

While the average weight of 198 pounds may not seem high to NHL fans who may not consider players 200 pounds or heavier rarities, it is worth remembering that NHL draftees are 18-20 — with first-rounders tending to be on the younger side — and then tend to add weight as they become veterans. 

The weight numbers in this study should be considered starting points for NHL players’ physical development instead of endpoints.

During these five years, the average weight ranged from 207 pounds (2005) to 195 pounds (2008). 

From a positional standpoint, defencemen stood out the most, weighing 202.8 pounds on average. In 2005, the average blueliner (defenseman) weighed 215 pounds, exceeding 23.9 percent of current defencemen active during the 2024-25 season. 

Only three defensemen met our light outlier criteria (≤175 pounds). However, Erik Karlsson, Ryan Ellis, and Jake Gardiner all played ten or more seasons in the NHL, with Karlsson becoming one of the best offensive defencemen ever.

That could lead to a hypothesis that light players taken in this era were likely exceptional because they overcame teams' prioritization of bulk. 

However, the forwards who met the criteria had mixed results in the NHL:

• Michael Grabner (170 pounds): Played 640 NHL games over 11 seasons with 276 points.
• Claude Giroux (172 pounds): Currently active. 1196 NHL games over 18 seasons with 1077 points as of writing.
• Brendan Smith (170 pounds): Currently active. 700 NHL games over 14 seasons with 140 points as of writing.
• Logan MacMillan (172 pounds): Never reached the NHL or topped 11 points in a season in the American Hockey League (AHL).
• Tyler Ennis (157 pounds): Played 700 NHL games over 10 seasons with 346 points.
• Daultan Leveille (172 pounds): Never reached the NHL and played 24 AHL games.
• Mattias Tedenby (175 pounds): Played 120 NHL games over four seasons with 30 points.
• Jordan Schroeder (175 pounds): Played 165 NHL games over six seasons with 42 points

More samples are needed to say anything conclusive about how these light players performed. The takeaway is that teams were shying away from them with first-round picks during that era.

Similarly, very few players were of shorter stature. Ennis and Schroeder were the only ones out of 150 players who came in under five-foot-10. 

At the top of the draft, height was preferred, as only eight of the 50 players selected in the top 10 in these years were under six feet.

That cohort included future stars like Sidney Crosby, Patrick Kane, and Matt Duchene, who thrived in an era following the NHL lockout when offense increased around the league.

This appears to be a transition period for draft philosophy. While there was a massive falloff in heavy outliers, they were still more common than their light counterparts.

The average first-rounder in this period resembles a player drafted in the last five years more closely than 2005-09.

During this time, teams were moving away from prizing size the way they had in the past, but they also needed to be more open-minded about undersized players. Part of that came from proof of concept. 

In the 2010s, one of the shortest high draft picks from the previous era — Kane — led all players in points (792) and helped lead the Chicago Blackhawks to three Stanley Cups. In the decade, a low-weight outlier (Giroux) also ranked fourth in points (741).

Still, only three 'light' defensemen were still taken — Jonas Brodin, Ryan Murphy, and Mark Pysyk — and only one player shorter than five-foot-10 (Max Domi).

One thing that stands out about this period is that there appears to be a bit of a shift at the end of it after a great deal of stability from 2010 to 2013:

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The 2014 draft had far more 'small forwards' than any before it in this sample (7), and the two lightest ones (David Pastrnak, 167 pounds, and William Nylander, 169 pounds) went on to become superstars, providing a clue of the direction the league was going.

While the averages remain stable from the previous era, these years include a meaningful shift towards light players. For the first time, draftees meeting our 'light' criteria are more common than 'heavy' players, if only by a small margin.

This period also includes the lightest first round in our sample (2018). In that draft, the average first-rounder weighed just 182 pounds. To give that number some context, in 2005, every single first-round selection—except goaltender Tuukka Rask—weighed at least four pounds more than that.

Part of what makes the 2018 NHL Draft an outlier is that its defensemen are particularly light (181 pounds). The 14 blueliners who comprise that cohort include stars like Quinn Hughes, K'Andre Miller, Rasmus Dahlin, and Evan Bouchard. Eight defensemen listed under 180 pounds were selected in the first round that year when there were only three before or after. 

Although the height averages have not moved much across the last 20 years, in this period, there was an increased openness to picking shorter players in the first round. 

Over five years, six players listed below five-foot-10 were picked:

• F Travis Konecny (2015)
• F Kailer Yamamoto (2017)
• D Erik Brannstrom (2017)
• D Quinn Hughes (2018)
• F Cole Caufield (2019)
• F Jakob Pelletier (2019)

This group still represents a tiny percentage of the total players drafted, but teams have become willing to imagine players of their stature as crucial building blocks. In many cases, they've been right.

Hughes is one of the best players in the NHL, Caufield is one of the league's more prolific scorers, and Konecny is a 30-goal threat known for his all-around contributions.

While these five drafts only moved the needle a little on average, they opened the door for a few more players to break the mold.

The averages of the past five drafts don't differ much from the five before them, but we see movement with outliers as the light group begins to outnumber the heavy group by a significant margin.

It's difficult to draw many conclusions about the results of these drafts because many of the players selected since 2020 have yet to arrive in the NHL or provide a clear idea of what kind of players they'll be in the league.

However, one interesting phenomenon lately has been a slight nudge back towards larger players. The average first-rounder in 2024 (192.6 pounds) was heavier than any draft since 2016. While 2023 hewed close to the era's average, 2022 also had a higher average weight (190.6 pounds). 

Put another way, just three of the last 11 drafts had their average first-rounder come in over 190 pounds, and two have come in the last three years. 

While that mini-trend suggests that NHL teams might be valuing bulkier players, there is also an increased willingness to opt for shorter prospects with valuable picks.

Since 2020, 11 players listed 5'10 or under on draft day were selected in the top-16 of their respective drafts, with the 2022 and 2023 NHL Drafts each seeing four players 5'10 and under selected in that range. That number of shorter prospects matches all 10 drafts between 2010 and 2019.

Teams are willing to roll the dice more frequently on high-skill players despite possible size deficiencies at the top of the draft. That doesn’t mean they won’t default to choosing bigger, more physically mature players later in the first round.

As long as hockey is a full-contact sport, some value will always be ascribed to size, strength, and physicality at the game's highest level. The question will be how much NHL teams will invest in that characteristic.

First-round picks are a good measuring stick for that because they represent teams' best resource for acquiring top-end talent — and recent drafts indicate that more and more franchises are open to investing in the type of players who probably would not have been highly coveted 15 or 20 years ago like Caufield, Michkov, and Bedard.

One of the 2025 NHL Draft’s top prospects — James Hagens — is currently listed at 5-foot-11 and 178 pounds. If he were picked in 2005’s Draft, he would’ve been the lightest forward taken in the first round by 8 pounds, and only two would be shorter than him.

The NHL is becoming more open and offensive, and the natural reaction is to pick the most skilled players available, even if they are smaller. That doesn't mean bigger players will be phased out of the game.  If they skate, there will be a place for them. The league recognizes that impactful talent comes in all shapes and sizes. 

Talent evaluators are always looking for players who can make an impact on the ice, regardless of the nature of that impact. Any NHL general manager would be thrilled with the opportunity to draft the next behemoth top defenseman in the Zdeno Chara mold today, and probably always will be. As Alex Ovechkin closes in on Wayne Gretzky’s goal record, he’ll provide a continual reminder that having a massive apex predator in the offensive zone is handy.

What’s changed recently is that it’s become easier to imagine a smaller player having a more significant impact than in previous decades — and NHL front offices are becoming more willing to bet on that idea.

Although the broader trend is clear, it will be interesting to monitor whether what has happened in the last three drafts represents a pendulum swing in the other direction. We will not know until the 2025 NHL Draft in Los Angeles.

References

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