The Epic Decline of Fighting in the NHL

Fights by Season

If there are no more regular season games played this season, it will be the fewest # of fights in a season that the NHL has seen since the 1969-70 season. Keep in mind the 69-70 season had 12 teams and a total of 456 games compared to the 1082 games that were played this season.

% of games with at least one fight

Of course, this season has been paused and, if and when the season were to restart, it is unlikely that rest of the season is played out in its entirety. To get a more accurate look, we should look at the % of NHL games with at least one recorded fight.

As you can see from the graph above, this season 16% of the games played so far this season had a fight, which is relatively flat compared to last season.

Team and Player Breakdown

Below is an interactive tool to look over different seasons by team and players. Filter by season and select a team on the left to look at team detail on the right.

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1 Comment

Kevin Hughes on May 8, 2020 at 4:42 pm

Thanks for putting this together … neat to be able to find individual players/teams/seasons/etc