Anyone who's been around the Wild for more than this season knows the overall strategy has been "Vets perform to their expected level, and hope the kids take the next step." And we have sat here waiting, patiently for those kids. To the point that we have thought "Maybe we just don't know how to evaluate talent?" It's been depressing.
Then I saw a tweet from @robvollmanNHL the other day that said:
"For about a decade, Minnesota's top 5 scorers had an average age close to 30. Right now, it's 26.2 -- four 24 year olds and Staal, 32."Which got me thinking, "huh, is that true?"
So, I checked for myself.
 |
| © Brad Rempel | 2016 Dec 11 |
All the data is right there in www.hockey-reference.com (which is an awesome site for historical stats). I looked back at the top 5 and top 10 scorers for each of the past five completed seasons, and this season-to-date. I ranked them by goals and separately by points, averaging the ages of the T5 and T10 for each season, on both metrics. Here's the output:
| Top 5 | Top 10 | |||
| Season | Goals | Pts | Goals | Pts |
| 2011-2012 | 27.8 | 29.2 | 27.7 | 27.9 |
| 2012-2013 | 28.6 | 29.4 | 28.4 | 28.0 |
| 2013-2014 | 25.6 | 28.0 | 27.6 | 27.4 |
| 2014-2015 | 27.6 | 29.2 | 26.7 | 26.7 |
| 2015-2016 | 28.2 | 28.0 | 27.1 | 27.8 |
| 2016-2017 | 27.4 | 27.4 | 28.5 | 28.2 |
So, if the formatting makes your eyes bug out, the bottom line is that the average age of the top five scorers has been on a general declining trend since the 2011-2012 season. Of the four sets of data, that's the most-conclusively declining trend line. The average age of the top 10 goal scorers is actually higher so far this year than it was in 2011-2012.
Keep in mind, Koivu has been in the top 10 for every one of these seasons, for both goals and points. And obviously he's only gotten older. Parise has been top 5 for both goals and points each of the past 4 seasons, since he signed here. Also aging. On goals, Coyle has been top 5 three times and top 10 the other 2 times, since he got to the bigs in 2013-2014.
Top 10 goals in 2013-2014
1. Pominville (31)
2. Parise (29)
3. Niederreiter (21)
4. Fontaine (26)
5. Coyle (21)
6. Heatley (33)
7. Koivu (30)
8. Cooke (35)
9. Suter (29)
10. Granlund (21)
Top 10 goals in 2016-2017
1. Coyle (24)
2. Staal (32)
3. Niederreiter (24)
4. Koivu (33)
5. Granlund (24)
6. Zucker (25)
7. Suter (32)
8. Parise (32)
9. Pominville (34)
10. Haula (25)
In the final analysis, yeah it does seem like the Wild is less-reliant on the same old 30+ year olds for offense, and is getting greater contributions from the "kids" than it was a few years ago.
Good on Fletcher, I guess.
Please join us in the message boards to discuss this article, and everything else.
