Did the NHL Draft's Size Obsession Peak in the 1990s? • nhlscraper

Overview

NHL draft discourse has always had a body-type vocabulary. Prospects are praised for “frame”, “length”, and “pro build” long before anyone knows whether those gifts will actually translate into NHL impact. What changes over time is the intensity of that preference. This example asks a historical version of the size question: when was the NHL draft most tilted toward bigger skaters? Instead of looking at one ranking board, we use nhlscraper::draft_picks() to study actual selections across almost half a century of drafts. The goal is not to claim that teams ever drafted size instead of skill. The goal is to see whether certain eras leaned harder on size as a tiebreaker, especially near the top of the board.

Build Draft Sample

We keep skaters drafted from 1979 onward, drop goalies, and require non-missing height and weight. To keep the comparisons intuitive, we split picks into first-round selections and everyone taken from Rounds 2 through 7.

# Pull draft picks and keep skaters with measured size.
draft_tbl <- nhlscraper::draft_picks()
draft_tbl <- draft_tbl[
  draft_tbl[['draftYear']] >= 1979 &
    draft_tbl[['positionCode']] != 'G' &
    !is.na(draft_tbl[['height']]) &
    !is.na(draft_tbl[['weight']]),
]

# Create era, round, and position buckets.
draft_tbl[['roundBucket']] <- ifelse(
  draft_tbl[['roundNumber']] == 1,
  'Round 1',
  'Rounds 2-7'
)
draft_tbl[['era']] <- cut(
  draft_tbl[['draftYear']],
  breaks = c(1978, 1989, 1999, 2009, 2019, Inf),
  labels = c(
    '1979-1989',
    '1990-1999',
    '2000-2009',
    '2010-2019',
    '2020-2025'
  )
)
draft_tbl[['positionBucket']] <- ifelse(
  draft_tbl[['positionCode']] == 'D',
  'Defense',
  'Forward'
)
draft_tbl[['tallSkater']] <- draft_tbl[['height']] >= 74
nrow(draft_tbl)
#> [1] 9998

That gives us 9998 drafted skaters with usable height and weight measurements. This is a big enough pool to tell an era story rather than a class-of-one story.

Start With Era Averages

The first pass is simple: average height and weight by era and round bucket.

# Summarize size by era and round bucket.
era_summary <- aggregate(
  cbind(height, weight) ~ era + roundBucket,
  data = draft_tbl,
  FUN = mean
)
make_table(
  era_summary,
  caption = 'Average drafted skater size by era and draft bucket.'
)

Average drafted skater size by era and draft bucket.
era	roundBucket	height	weight
1979-1989	Round 1	72.934	200.659
1990-1999	Round 1	74.060	209.534
2000-2009	Round 1	73.694	203.086
2010-2019	Round 1	72.889	189.757
2020-2025	Round 1	73.032	188.292
1979-1989	Rounds 2-7	72.381	192.216
1990-1999	Rounds 2-7	73.094	195.145
2000-2009	Rounds 2-7	73.148	195.120
2010-2019	Rounds 2-7	72.575	186.634
2020-2025	Rounds 2-7	72.981	185.607

The shape is more nuanced than the usual “the game keeps getting bigger” story. Average first-round size surged in the 1990s, stayed elevated in the 2000s, then fell back in the 2010s. The top of the board in the modern era is still not exactly small, but it does not look like the peak size era. Just as important, first-round skaters are consistently larger than later-round skaters. The draft’s size preference shows up not only across eras, but also in where teams are willing to spend their most expensive picks.

Plot the First-Round Size Arc

A year-by-year line makes the rise-and-fall pattern easier to see. To reduce noise from small annual swings, we use a five-draft rolling average.

# Compute annual mean height by round bucket.
round1_annual <- aggregate(
  height ~ draftYear,
  data = draft_tbl[draft_tbl[['roundBucket']] == 'Round 1', ],
  FUN = mean
)
later_annual <- aggregate(
  height ~ draftYear,
  data = draft_tbl[draft_tbl[['roundBucket']] == 'Rounds 2-7', ],
  FUN = mean
)

# Smooth annual means with five-draft rolling averages.
round1_annual[['rollHeight']] <- as.numeric(stats::filter(
  round1_annual[['height']],
  rep(1 / 5, 5),
  sides = 2
))
later_annual[['rollHeight']] <- as.numeric(stats::filter(
  later_annual[['height']],
  rep(1 / 5, 5),
  sides = 2
))

graphics::plot(
  round1_annual[['draftYear']],
  round1_annual[['rollHeight']],
  type = 'l',
  lwd = 2,
  col = '#0f4c5c',
  ylim = range(
    c(round1_annual[['rollHeight']], later_annual[['rollHeight']]),
    na.rm = TRUE
  ),
  xlab = 'Draft Year',
  ylab = 'Average Height (Inches)'
)
graphics::lines(
  later_annual[['draftYear']],
  later_annual[['rollHeight']],
  lwd = 2,
  col = '#e36414'
)
graphics::legend(
  'topright',
  legend = c('Round 1', 'Rounds 2-7'),
  col = c('#0f4c5c', '#e36414'),
  lwd = 2,
  bty = 'n'
)

Five-draft rolling average height for first-round skaters and later-round skaters.

The picture is striking. The first round visibly bulks up in the 1990s, stays large through the 2000s, and then cools off. Later rounds move in the same direction, but less dramatically. That is exactly what you would expect if size became a stronger premium near the very top of the draft board during that period.

Ask How Often Teams Chased Tall Skaters

Averages can hide roster mix, so it helps to translate height into a more intuitive marker. Here we ask what share of drafted skaters were at least 6-foot-2.

# Summarize share of taller skaters by era.
tall_share <- aggregate(
  tallSkater ~ era + roundBucket,
  data = draft_tbl,
  FUN = mean
)
tall_counts <- aggregate(
  height ~ era + roundBucket,
  data = draft_tbl,
  FUN = length
)
names(tall_counts)[names(tall_counts) == 'height'] <- 'n'
tall_share <- merge(tall_share, tall_counts, by = c('era', 'roundBucket'))

make_table(
  tall_share,
  caption = 'Share of drafted skaters measuring at least 6-foot-2.'
)

Share of drafted skaters measuring at least 6-foot-2.
era	roundBucket	tallSkater	n
1979-1989	Round 1	0.363	226
1979-1989	Rounds 2-7	0.296	2070
1990-1999	Round 1	0.608	232
1990-1999	Rounds 2-7	0.402	2107
2000-2009	Round 1	0.536	278
2000-2009	Rounds 2-7	0.429	1978
2010-2019	Round 1	0.368	296
2010-2019	Rounds 2-7	0.331	1609
2020-2025	Round 1	0.400	185
2020-2025	Rounds 2-7	0.417	1017

The first round is where the story becomes loudest. In the 1990s, about 60.8 percent of first-round skaters in the sample were at least 6-foot-2. In the 2010s that share dropped to about 36.8 percent. That is a major shift in what the “ideal” first-round skater looked like.

# Plot tall-skater shares by era.
tall_matrix <- rbind(
  tall_share[['tallSkater']][tall_share[['roundBucket']] == 'Round 1'],
  tall_share[['tallSkater']][tall_share[['roundBucket']] == 'Rounds 2-7']
)
graphics::barplot(
  tall_matrix,
  beside = TRUE,
  col = c('#1b4332', '#95d5b2'),
  ylim = c(0, 0.7),
  names.arg = levels(draft_tbl[['era']]),
  ylab = 'Share At Least 6-Foot-2',
  xlab = 'Draft Era'
)
graphics::legend(
  'topright',
  legend = c('Round 1', 'Rounds 2-7'),
  fill = c('#1b4332', '#95d5b2'),
  bty = 'n'
)

Share of drafted skaters at least 6-foot-2 by era and round bucket.

Separate Position From Era

Part of any draft-size story is just that defensemen tend to run bigger than forwards. So it helps to break the sample out by position family.

# Summarize size by era and position family.
position_summary <- aggregate(
  cbind(height, weight) ~ era + positionBucket,
  data = draft_tbl,
  FUN = mean
)
make_table(
  position_summary,
  caption = 'Average drafted skater size by era and position family.'
)

Average drafted skater size by era and position family.
era	positionBucket	height	weight
1979-1989	Defense	72.981	197.046
1990-1999	Defense	73.897	200.884
2000-2009	Defense	73.888	200.536
2010-2019	Defense	73.255	190.180
2020-2025	Defense	73.840	190.435
1979-1989	Forward	72.117	190.719
1990-1999	Forward	72.781	194.079
2000-2009	Forward	72.832	193.575
2010-2019	Forward	72.246	185.289
2020-2025	Forward	72.516	183.561

Defensemen are consistently taller and heavier than forwards, which is exactly what most observers would expect. But the 1990s surge does not disappear once position is split out. The size bulge is still visible, especially for first-round picks, so this is not just a story about drafting more defensemen.

Estimate First-Round Premium

As a simple check, we can fit a linear model with height as the response and draft year, first-round status, and defense status as predictors.

# Fit simple draft-height model.
draft_fit <- stats::lm(
  height ~ draftYear + I(roundNumber == 1) + I(positionCode == 'D'),
  data = draft_tbl
)
draft_fit_tbl <- as.data.frame(summary(draft_fit)$coefficients)
draft_fit_tbl[['term']] <- rownames(draft_fit_tbl)
rownames(draft_fit_tbl) <- NULL
draft_fit_tbl[['term']] <- c(
  'Intercept',
  'Draft year',
  'First-round indicator',
  'Defense indicator'
)
draft_fit_tbl <- draft_fit_tbl[, c(
  'term',
  'Estimate',
  'Std. Error',
  't value',
  'Pr(>|t|)'
)]
make_table(
  draft_fit_tbl,
  caption = 'Linear model of drafted skater height.',
  digits = 4
)

Linear model of drafted skater height.
term	Estimate	Std. Error	t value
Intercept	58.4427	3.0281	19.3002
Draft year	0.0070	0.0015	4.6221
First-round indicator	0.5170	0.0610	8.4729
Defense indicator	1.0542	0.0413	25.5233

This model says the first-round premium is still real even after accounting for time and position. First-round skaters come in roughly 0.52 inches taller on average, while defensemen add about 1.05 inches on top of that. The draft-year slope itself is small because the historical pattern is not a straight line. That is the core takeaway of the whole article: draft size preference looks less like a steady march and more like a boom that peaked in the 1990s and early 2000s.

What We Learned

The draft has never been indifferent to size, especially in the first round. Bigger skaters have consistently been favored near the top of the board, and defensemen have carried their own structural size premium the whole way through. But the strongest form of that bias does not appear to be a modern invention. In this sample, the most size-forward era is the 1990s, with the 2000s not far behind. That makes nhlscraper::draft_picks() a useful reminder that draft archetypes move in cycles: the league does not just change, it overcorrects and then changes back.