Sitting in front of my computer on my lunch break today, I decided to type in ‘NHL and hockey’ in the Web of Science. For those unaware, the Web of Science is pretty much one stop shopping if you’re looking for research on any given topic (and unfortunately only available through a university or by having a bajillion dollars). I was happily surprised to have 57 results spit back at me with titles ranging from “Is the overtime period in an NHL game long enough?” to “Assessing whether black uniforms affect the decisions of Turkish soccer referees”. I perused a couple and found an interesting article called “A 26 year physiological description of a National League Hockey team”. Basically, these guys measured the size and fitness of the same NHL hockey team every year for 26 years. Wanting to know what team they had picked I quickly skimmed the paper but was disappointed to find they had left the name of the team out. The methods, however, made me wonder why they didn’t just come out and say it. Here’s are some “hints”:

If you are or ever met a Canadian that lived through the 80′s, you know who this team is. The weird thing is that they don’t seem to get their facts straight. Any one else see some mistakes in there? It also makes me wonder if the results of this whole study are biased by the presence of a certain, currently unemployed, ‘great’ Canadian.

The results of the study are interesting in themselves too. Over the 26 year period, most measures of size and fitness increased suggesting today’s players are in better shape than their 1980′s counterparts. The result was surprisingly different for goalies who were shorter with less body mass but more flexible. And, thankfully for the Canadien’s top line, size didn’t seem to translate into Stanley Cup rings.