I’ve done this post for years and years, normally at the beginning of the season, over at the old blogstead.

Things were kind of busy around here in the fall, so I didn’t get around to posting it earlier this season. NHL.com’s anti-copy and paste format also didn’t help. But yeah I did hear about it a lot on social media.

@mirtle Did you do your annual report of teams by size? Going to pull it together unless I can find it somewhere. — Mike Bonn 🇨🇦🏒 (@13Mike31) November 25, 2017

So to rectify that wrong, here’s a new and improved version of the annual average age, height and weight survey — plus a bonus chart at the end on something completely different. I’ve only included skaters here — no goalies — and they had to have skated in a minimum of 100 minutes at 5-on-5 as of Thursday afternoon.

Credit to Natural Stat Trick for the data. And for allowing us to copy and paste.

NHL average age this season (as of today): 27.1

Columbus and Colorado are young — almost impossibly so. The Blue Jackets have 15 players who aren’t yet 25 and no one is over 31 years old. When Jack Johnson is your second oldest skater, that’s a young group.

The Avs, meanwhile, have tried to turn their roster over quickly, and that’s meant giving chances to teenagers Tyson Jost and Samuel Girard. It’s paid off in the standings, too. You wonder if more organizations will go the Colorado/New Jersey route in the future.

On the other side of things, Detroit and Ottawa are ancient by today’s league standards. Old and bad unfortunately. The Red Wings have eight players who are 30-plus and no one who’s really young beyond 21-year-old Dylan Larkin. There used to be a time that Detroit was always the oldest team and always a Cup favourite.

Now is not that time.

The Senators, meanwhile, are skewed old in part because of some depth players like Nate Thompson (33), Johnny Oduya (36) and Alex Burrows (almost 37). Dion Phaneuf, who turns 33 in April, is getting up there, too.

The other team that stands out as a surprise to me is the Leafs. The fact they are above average in skater age is remarkable after spending much of last season as the NHL’s youngest team. Patrick Marleau, Ron Hainsey and Dominic Moore all being 36-plus is one big reason why.

That is no longer a group of just kids.

NHL average height this season: 73.1 inches (6-foot-1.1)

I chuckled when I saw Boston in the short camp. Even with 81-inch giant Zdeno Chara, the likes of Frank Vatrano, Matt Grzelcyk, Torey Krug and Brad Marchand — all listed at 5-foot-9 — bring down the average.

Without Chara, they’d be an average height of 72.1, by far the shortest team in the league.

As it is, that honour goes to Montreal, a club that has been called The Smurfs for years and years now by rival fans.

The Jets, meanwhile, remain behemoths. They have 10 skaters who are 6-foot-3 or taller, including Patrik Laine, Adam Lowry, Dustin Byfuglien, Tyler Myers and Blake Wheeler who are all at least 6-foot-5.

The average height in the NHL has hovered around 6-foot-1 for as long as I can remember. I believe it’s actually crept down in recent years, as teams have been more willing to play shorter defencemen.

Height isn’t a requirement to play in the NHL. Unless you’re a goalie.

NHL average weight this season: 200.7 lbs

Dallas and St. Louis are big. The Lightning are decidedly not. Which would make for an interesting Stanley Cup final if that’s how it works out.

The Stars added Martin Hanzal (230) and Marc Methot (233) in the off-season, so I’m not surprised other teams are saying they’re playing slower than in the past. Only John Klingberg is really light on the roster, at 177.

The Blues, meanwhile, have long been a heavy team: Patrik Berglund, Colton Parayko, Chris Thorburn and Vladdy Tarasenko all top 220 and then they’ve got a bunch of guys in the 210-215 range.

Tampa is very small up front and big on D. You take out Victor Hedman, Braydon Coburn, Andrej Sustr and Mikhail Sergachev and their average weight plummets to close to 185 pounds. They have six players listed at 180 or less, with Brayden Point’s 166 making him the sixth lightest regular in the NHL

(Smaller players: Johnny Gaudreau, Tyler Ennis, Samuel Girard, Paul Byron and Alex DeBrincat.)

So you can play in the NHL at under 170 pounds.

This chart somewhat mirrors the height one, with a few exceptions. The correlation is fairly strong (R2 = 0.48).

So the biggest teams overall are at the top right and the smallest are at the lower left.

Given the Lightning are the NHL’s top team, it’s fairly safe to say there’s not a whole lot of correlation between average size and winning games — other than rebuilding teams can tend to have smaller and younger players.

Although going young doesn’t seem to be a bad idea anymore in this league.

NHL average draft position: 64th

This is just kind of a fun one I threw in there. I left out any players who were undrafted, so that might skew things a little. (Tampa has seven undrafted players and Vegas has six, for example.)

But looking at those who were drafted, Washington has 12 first-round picks among their 21 skaters, which is why they are at the top of the chart here.

The Sharks, meanwhile, have two fifth rounders, two sixth rounders, three seventh rounders and a ninth rounder in their lineup most nights. Call it the Tim Heed factor, maybe.

The Leafs relatively low ranking is thanks to a lot of deep picks on the roster: Connor Brown, Leo Komarov, Matt Martin, Roman Polak, Zach Hyman and Connor Carrick.

I’m not sure this means a whole lot given it incorporates players that were drafted by other organizations, but some trivia to consider nonetheless.

The full table of results is here for anyone who is curious:

Main photo: Len Redkoles/NHLI via Getty Images

Chart design: Dom Loose Chicken