Canada was the country with the highest number of active NHL players as of March 2024. Specifically, the country had 1,078 players who were active in the National Hockey League when the study was conducted. The National Hockey League (NHL) is a professional ice hockey league in North America, featuring seven franchises from Canada and 25 from the United States.

How popular is ice hockey in Canada?

Ice hockey is the official winter sport for the North American country, signifying its popularity. In 2022, there were just over half a million registered ice hockey players in Canada and the country boasted close to eight thousand ice hockey rinks to accommodate the sport. Meanwhile, looking at the popularity of the NHL in Canada, around 1.2 million individuals tuned in to watch the NHL’s annual playoff tournament in 2022 on Canada’s Sportsnet channel.

How valuable are NHL franchises?

The Toronto Maple Leafs were the most valuable NHL franchise in 2023, with an estimated valuation of 2.8 billion U.S. dollars that year. The Maple Leafs were twice as valuable as the average NHL franchise valuation, which amounted to just over 1.3 billion U.S. dollars in 2023. Nevertheless, the NHL’s average franchise value was notably lower when considering the average franchise values of other major sports leagues in North America.

A January 2024 survey in the United States revealed that 72 percent of NHL fans who watched or attended games were Caucasian. Meanwhile, almost 17 percent of fans were Hispanic.

Ice hockey is a worldwide sport that is particularly popular in the United States and Canada thanks to the prominence of the National Hockey League (NHL). According to a survey conducted in April 2023, just 10 percent of Black respondents from the United States were avid fans of NHL.

The National Hockey League, or NHL, is a North American professional sports association bringing together ice hockey franchises from Canada and the United States. While ** percent of NHL fans are Hispanic, this figure varies greatly between fans of different teams. Around ** percent of Los Angeles Kings fans were Hispanic, while the percentage among St. Louis Blues fans stood at ** percent.

Proportion of Canadian-born versus American-born active MLB players who bat left or right by region of the United States defined by hockey participation.

Ice hockey is a sport that is particularly popular in the United States and Canada thanks to the prominence of the National Hockey League (NHL). During 2020 survey in the United States, ** percent of NHL fans were Hispanic.

Context & Content

This dataset features the salaries of 874 nhl players for the 2016/2017 season. I have randomly split the players into a training (612 players) and test (262 players) populations. There are 151 predictor columns (described in column legend section, if you're not familiar with hockey the meaning of some of these may be a bit cryptic!) as well as a leading column with the players 2016/2017 annual salary. For the test population the actual salaries have been broken off into a separate .csv file.

Acknowledgements

Raw excel sheet was acquired http://www.hockeyabstract.com/

Inspiration

Can you build a model to predict NHL player's salaries? What are the best predictors of how much a player will make?

Column Legend

Acronym - Meaning

%FOT - Percentage of all on-ice faceoffs taken by this player.

+/- - Plus/minus

1G - First goals of a game

A/60 - Events Against per 60 minutes, defaults to Corsi, but can be set to another stat

A1 - First assists, primary assists

A2 - Second assists, secondary assists

BLK% - Percentage of all opposing shot attempts blocked by this player

Born - Birth date

C.Close - A player shot attempt (Corsi) differential when the game was close

C.Down - A player shot attempt (Corsi) differential when the team was trailing

C.Tied - A player shot attempt (Corsi) differential when the team was tied

C.Up - A player shot attempt (Corsi) differential when the team was in the lead

CA - Shot attempts allowed (Corsi, SAT) while this player was on the ice

Cap Hit - The player's cap hit

CBar - Crossbars hit

CF - The team's shot attempts (Corsi, SAT) while this player was on the ice

CF.QoC - A weighted average of the Corsi percentage of a player's opponents

CF.QoT - A weighted average of the Corsi percentage of a player's linemates

CHIP - Cap Hit of Injured Player is games lost to injury multiplied by cap hit per game

City - City of birth

Cntry - Country of birth

DAP - Disciplined aggression proxy, which is hits and takeaways divided by minor penalties

DFA - Dangerous Fenwick against, which is on-ice unblocked shot attempts weighted by shot quality

DFF - Dangerous Fenwick for, which is on-ice unblocked shot attempts weighted by shot quality

DFF.QoC - Quality of Competition metric based on Dangerous Fenwick, which is unblocked shot attempts weighted for shot quality

DftRd - Round in which the player was drafted

DftYr - Year drafted

Diff - Events for minus event against, defaults to Corsi, but can be set to another stat

Diff/60 - Events for minus event against, per 60 minutes, defaults to Corsi, but can be set to another stat

DPS - Defensive point shares, a catch-all stats that measures a player's defensive contributions in points in the standings

DSA - Dangerous shots allowed while this player was on the ice, which is rebounds plus rush shots

DSF - The team's dangerous shots while this player was on the ice, which is rebounds plus rush shots

DZF - Shifts this player has ended with an defensive zone faceoff

dzFOL - Faceoffs lost in the defensive zone

dzFOW - Faceoffs win in the defensive zone

dzGAPF - Team goals allowed after faceoffs taken in the defensive zone

dzGFPF - Team goals scored after faceoffs taken in the defensive zone

DZS - Shifts this player has started with an defensive zone faceoff

dzSAPF - Team shot attempts allowed after faceoffs taken in the defensive zone

dzSFPF - Team shot attempts taken after faceoffs taken in the defensive zone

E+/- - A player's expected +/-, based on his team and minutes played

ENG - Empty-net goals

Exp dzNGPF - Expected goal differential after faceoffs taken in the defensive zone, based on the number of them

Exp dzNSPF - Expected shot differential after faceoffs taken in the defensive zone, based on the number of them

Exp ozNGPF - Expected goal differential after faceoffs taken in the offensive zone, based on the number of them

Exp ozNSPF - Expected shot differential after faceoffs taken in the offensive zone, based on the number of them

F.Close - A player unblocked shot attempt (Fenwick) differential when the game was close

F.Down - A player unblocked shot attempt (Fenwick) differential when the team was trailing

F.Tied - A player unblocked shot attempt (Fenwick) differential when the team was tied

F.Up - A player unblocked shot attempt (Fenwick) differential when the team was in the lead. Not the best acronym.

F/60 - Events For per 60 minutes, defaults to Corsi, but can be set to another stat

FA - Unblocked shot attempts allowed (Fenwick, USAT) while this player was on the ice

FF - The team's unblocked shot attempts (Fenwick, USAT) while this player was on the ice

First Name -

FO% - Faceoff winning percentage

FO%vsL - Faceoff winning percentage against lefthanded opponents

FO%vsR - Faceoff winning percentage against righthanded opponents

FOL - The team's faceoff losses...

In the 2023/24 season, the United States had the most registered ice hockey players out of any country worldwide. According to the International Ice Hockey Federation, there were 486,464 registered ice hockey players in the United States.

Proportion of Canadian-born versus American-, Dominican Republic- and South-East Asian-born active MLB players who bat left or right.

Number and proportion of left- and right-handed throwers among left-handed batters.

Financial overview and grant giving statistics of North Country Cougar Youth Hockey Inc.

Financial overview and grant giving statistics of Copper Country Junior Hockey Association Inc.

This graph shows the distribution of the ********* NHL regular season television audience by race or ethnicity. The share of white television viewers for the ******* NHL regular season was ** percent.

In the 2023/24 season, there were a total of roughly 470,000 registered ice hockey players in Canada, according to the International Ice Hockey Federation. This marked a significant increase on the pandemic-affected numbers from the previous years, but the participation in ice hockey did not quite reach pre-pandemic levels.

This statistic shows the all-time medal table for ice hockey in the Winter Olympics as of 2018, sorted by country. Canada has won a total of ** medals in ice hockey at the Winter Olympics - ** gold, six silver, and three bronze medals.

Canada are the most successful country at the men's ice hockey world championships in terms of number of medals won. Team Canada claimed gold at the 2023 World Championships to bring their total medal tally to 53. Czechia claimed gold at the 2024 tournament, following a third place finish two year before.

As a result of the coronavirus pandemic causing commercial interruptions, wholesale sales of ice hockey protective gear in the United States dropped to approximately **** million U.S. dollars in 2020, making it a considerable decrease compared to the previous year. In 2021, however, U.S. wholesale sales of such items bounced back to an estimated *** million U.S. dollars, and continued to increase to approximately *** million U.S. dollars in 2024. The other two largest product segments in the ice hockey market were skates and hockey sticks. Ice Hockey Ice hockey is a very popular sport to play and watch in the United States and in Canada. Both countries ranked the highest by number of registered ice hockey players, at over *** thousand in Canada and nearly *** thousand in the United States in 2024. Canada also accounted for the most indoor and outdoor ice hockey rinks in the world. In 2024, there were about ***** indoor ice rinks and ***** outdoor ice rinks in the country. Sporting Goods in the United States The sports equipment market in North America is expected to exceed *****billion U.S. dollars in value by 2025, up from the estimated **** billion dollars in 2020. Sports equipment falls under this broader category of sporting goods. In terms of retail sales of the U.S. sporting goods market, athletic apparel was and always has been the most lucrative category, generating over **** billion U.S. dollars’ worth of U.S. wholesale sales in 2024.