With the 2024-25 NHL season in full swing, we have conducted an analysis of more than 2000+ NHL players of the last 10 years to find out what are their most common first names, places of birth, dates of birth, star signs & much more.
NAMES & INITIALS
When it comes to the most common names of NHL players, Ryan turned out to be the most popular name – 41 players were named Ryan – followed by Matt (36 players) and Michael (33 players), respectively.
The most common first name initials of NHL players were “J” since 327 NHL players had a name starting with “J” followed by “M” (261 players) and “A” (190 players).
PLACES OF BIRTH
When looking at countries of birth, most of the NHL players were born in Canada - 927 - followed by the United States (592 players) and Sweden (200 players).
More specifically, Toronto (Canada) has produced the most NHL players since 62 players were born there, followed by Calgary (Canada), Edmonton (Canada), Stockholm (Sweden) and Winnipeg (Canada).
If focusing only on players born in Canada, the provinces that have produced the most NHL players are Ontario (398 players), followed by Alberta (153 players) and Quebec (131 players).
Feel free to also have a look at the best Ontario betting sites. For the best Alberta betting sites, click here.
DATES OF BIRTH
The most common months of birth of NHL players turned out to be February and January, since 233 players were born in February and 233 in January, followed by March with 217 players being born in March.
When looking at the weekdays of birth, Tuesday was the most common day of birth of NHL players since 391 of them were born on a Tuesday, followed by Thursday (337 players) and Monday (335 players).
Lastly, the most common star signs of NHL players are Aquarius (242 players), Taurus (217 players) and Pisces (214 players).
METHODOLOGY
- By gathering historical data on NHL players, CanadaSportsBetting.ca aimed to uncover trends related to the cities and countries that have produced the most players, as well as more personal attributes like the most common names, birth dates, and star signs
- The analysis spanned multiple seasons, starting with the 2014-2015 season and ending with the most recent 2024-25 season
- Data Sources: The project leveraged data scraped from official NHL websites (nhl.com) for the most recent season, as well as historical data going back 10 years for each NHL team
- The data was cleaned by removing duplicate players across seasons (thus ensuring that players are counted only once), fixing data inconsistencies (e.g., standardizing player names, countries, birth dates, etc.) and handling missing or incomplete data points to ensure accuracy and completeness of the analysis
- In total, 2214 individual NHL players across 10 seasons were analyzed (and 9833 when including duplicates that were removed)
- If a certain value was missing, the player was omitted from that part of the analysis
