Do You Believe in Magic? (West 2011)

 

 

If you are an avid reader of the DobberHockey website you probably are familiar with the popular mantra the "magical fourth year". There has been plenty of debate on whether or not this concept truly exists with plenty of arguments for and against. I've spent quite a few hours compiling all of the numbers and doing research in an attempt to finally settle (?) the debate.

 

All of the research can be found in the attached Excel file. Feel free to download it and browse at your leisurely pleasure.

 

Basically, what I did was track the career progression of 212 NHL players from season to season looking at their overall seasonal point totals as well as their point-per-game totals. The following tables are a summation of the information that I found.

 

Year	Overall Average Point Production of all 212 players	Percentage Increase Compared to Previous Year
1	31.1	–
2	42.2	35.7
3	45.9	8.8
4	52.9	15.3
5	56.0	5.9
6	55.3	4.5
7	55.2	-0.2
8	59.8	8.3
9	59.1	-1.2
10	59.2	0.1
11	55.2	-7.8
12	53.6	-3.9