Bridger PenningtonFund Launch & Investment Expert

The Best Hockey Players All Share This | Bridger Pennington

15 Dec 2023 · 1 min

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Bridger Pennington explains why NHL players are disproportionately born in January through March. A youth-sports cutoff on January 1 gives kids born early in the year a relative-age advantage: they're bigger, get selected to better teams, receive superior coaching, and that edge compounds all the way to professional hockey.

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They did this whole study. Malcolm Gladwell did this thing on NHL players. They found that there was this anomaly, like 70% of NHL players had birthdays in January and February and March. Why would that be the case? And they went back and what they perceived was the cutoff in youth sports for hockey, at least in the United States, is January 1st. The kids that were born in January, February, and March are 8 months or 11 months older than kids that are born in November or December of that year. He goes, what we perceived was the, you know, when you're 7 years old on your first hockey game, when you're 11 months older than other kids, that's a big advantage when you're going, when you're a kid, right? So, those kids performed better. And because they performed better, they liked hockey. And then because they performed better, they were put on the all-star team. And the all-star team has better coaches. And because they have better coaches, they have better chances to play more and they get more hours playing. And because of that, they then excel to the next level. And it dovetails all the way till they made it to the NHL. And 70% of NHL players are born in those first 3 months.