I've seen a fair share of graphs over the years that depict a decline in play from most players after a certain age, or a certain amount of games. I thought I would look at it myself as a little project and ended up losing myself down a bit of a rabbit hole.

Alex Ovechkin, Joe Pavelski, Kris Letang, Patrice Bergeron, Ryan Getzlaf, Alex Goligoski are doing things this season that most models don't forecast after the age of 35, which is improving over their prior season.

I've got a little side project where I plug the night's stats into a formula and generate a game rating using six as the base. Ratings over eight are few and far between, with very good nights being around seven or higher. The beauty of it is that it can be calculated over a season or a career as well as the single game. At the end of the season, there might be McDavid, MacKinnon and Matthews over seven and that is it. The league average to date is a rating of 6.418 and I've put a replacement value at around 6.20 to 6.25.

Here is a graph, that shows the average rating by birth year, with the league average being a flat line.

The strange thing happening this year in the graph above is that the birth year 1985 is not flat or going down like the six or seven years before. It actually leads the NHL, which when you look at the players in that birth year, it is impressive.

I thought I would go through each birth year and look at the most productive skaters and see how they compare to the graph. I will focus on the Western players as much as I can.

2003 (44 GP this season) (CF% 47.01)

There are only two skaters in the NHL born in 2003 and only Cole Sillinger of Columbus is still there. Sillinger has played 35 games and has six goals and seven assists. Mason McTavish played nine games with Anaheim and had two goals and an assist before being sent back to the OHL. McTavish turns 19 in two weeks and Sillinger won't turn until May.

McTavish played in the World Juniors for Canada before it was postponed and had five points in two games. He's only played six games in the OHL with seven goals and two assists.

2002 (176 GP) (CF 50.66)

There are four NHL regulars amongst this group with Lucas Raymond being the best to date with 11 goals and 21 assists in 39 games in Detroit. The others are Jamie Drysdale in Anaheim, Tim Stutzle in Ottawa and Seth Jarvis in Carolina who have all shown flashes with the usual growing pains. This group is below the league average, but above their peer group from 1998 through 2001. Raymond is above the league average, by a fair bit.

Drysdale had a shaky start after his first 10 games of the season, had a good 20 game stretch, but has struggled in his past eight games with three assists and a minus seven.

2001 (698 GP) (CF 49.73)

Trevor Zegras in Anaheim leads this group, along with Moritz Seider in Detroit, Jack Hughes and Dawson Mercer in New Jersey and Anton Lundell in Florida. There are 19 NHL regulars or semi-regulars that have played this season. This group, on the whole, is a little bit below the 2002 group in terms of impact so far.

Zegras had a slow start in Anaheim this year after being the consensus pick for the Calder. He missed three games in early January with Covid but has played the past five games and has two goals and two assists and like most Ducks has struggled with the plus/minus as he was minus-four in those games. He has put himself back in the Calder race.

The other exciting players in the West are Kirby Dach in Chicago (36-6-8-14), Alex Newhook in Colorado(26-7-5-12) and Matt Boldy in Minnesota (3-2-1-3). There is a concern for Bowen Byram in Colorado (18-5-6-11) who appears to be dealing with post-concussion issues.

2000 (620 GP) (CF 46.83)

This group has Andrei Svechnikov in Carolina and Rasmus Dahlin in Buffalo and then there is a bit of a dropoff in production this season. This age group is below all of their contemporaries from 2003 to 1987.

The top Western player is Nils Hoglander in Vancouver (38-8-6-14), who has struggled a little since Bruce Boudreau came on board as coach, with three goals and one assist in 13 games. Some other names in the West are Rasmus Kupari in Los Angeles (35-3-5-8) and Barrett Hayton in Arizona (26-2-4-6). After that, it is pretty slim pickings for any impact players that are 21-22 years old.

1999 (1,158 GP) (CF 49.32)

The West is well represented with this age group as it has Jason Robertson in Dallas (28-13-19-32), Quinn Hughes in Vancouver (37-2-28-30), Robert Thomas in St. Louis (31-5-25-30), Miro Heiskanen in Dallas (34-4-18-22) and Evan Bouchard (rookie) in Edmonton (35-6-13-19). 

Brady Tkachuk and Josh Norris in Ottawa, Nico Hischier in New Jersey, Martin Necas in Carolina and Nick Suzuki in Montreal are some notable players in the East.

The graph is going up for these 21 and 22 years olds but as a group, they are still below average and continuing to learn. Expect this age group to show much better next season as some of the guys in the AHL make the leap to the NHL.

1998 (1,811 GP) (CF 49.82)

This group is pretty stellar at the top but lacks a little depth towards the bottom and has seen some struggles from established players. It is led by Adam Fox with the Rangers, Jordan Kyrou in St. Louis, Cale Makar in Colorado, Jesper Bratt in New Jersey, Drake Batherson in Ottawa.

Elias Pettersson in Vancouver (38-8-19) had two goals on Sunday night and the Canucks hope that lights a fire under him for the rest of the season. Kyrou (34-14-25-39) has had an unbelievable season so far, along with Makar (31-16-20-36).

Other notables in the West are Jesse Puljujarvi in Edmonton (33-10-15-25), Samuel Girard in Colorado (33-3-16-19) and Pierre-Luc Dubois in Winnipeg (34-15-11-26).

These players are in the territory of the fourth year break-out at the ages of 23 and 24, and as we move to the next group, that is exactly what has happened.

1997 (2,014 GP) (CF 51.14)

At 24 and 25 years of age, this is the first group that is above the league average on the whole and well above the 1998 group.

Not really surprising when you have Connor McDavid of the Oilers in your group (34-19-34-53), but even he has struggled of late, with 'only' eight points in his past nine games. Add in, Auston Matthews in Toronto (33-25-15-40), Kirill Kaprizov in Minnesota (33-14-28-42) and Sebastian Aho in Carolina (32-16-22-38).

The West is well represented with McDavid, Kaprizov and Troy Terry in Anaheim (38-22-14-36), Matthew Tkachuk in Calgary (34-16-16-32), Alex DeBrincat in Chicago (38-23-9-32) and Joel Eriksson Ek in Minnesota (30-11-9-20).

The 1997 group has played the most games of any age group in the NHL this season. It clearly shows that this is where players start to take off in terms of production and impact and mostly maintain it across the next four years.

1996 (1,895 GP) (CF 51.79)

The West has three players near the top of this group in Mikko Rantanen in Colorado (32-19-25-44), Timo Meier in San Jose (34-15-25-40) and Kyle Connor in Winnipeg (34-20-17-37). Connor has struggled over his past seven games with five points and a minus eight.

Other notables from the West are Nikolaj Ehlers in Winnipeg (33-13-12-25), Roope Hintz in Dallas (33-15-12-27) and Adrian Kempe in Los Angeles (38-17-7-24).

Most of the players in the 25 to the 26-year-old range have established themselves and their spots on the team. There are fewer auditions for this group and the leashes are a little shorter to show something when given the opportunity.

1995 (1,779 GP) (CF 50.86)

Leon Draisaitl in Edmonton (35-26-28-54) and Nathan MacKinnon in Colorado (25-8-30-38) are the big guns in this group and are having excellent seasons. Draisaitl has 13 PPGs in 35 games, his career-high is 16. MacKinnon has been on fire since returning from injury and in his past 17 games has seven goals and 21 assists.

Pavel Buchnevich in St. Louis (34-14-21-35) has been having a good first season in the West along with his teammate Ivan Barbashev (37-13-17-30).

Florida has Sam Reinhart, Carter Verhaeghe, Aleksander Barkov and Maxim Mamin from this group, which gives most of these players about two or three consistent years in their prime.

1994 (1,975 GP) (CF 50.61)

This group lacks the number of superstars that the others have but is very solid with the amount of production and impact that the players have.

Jake Guentzel in Pittsburgh (31-19-18-37) leads the group in production while the best from the West are Chandler Stephenson in Vegas (38-10-26-36), Ryan Hartman in Minnesota (34-16-14-30), Filip Forsberg in Nashville (26-18-11-29), Elias Lindholm in Calgary (34-12-17-29) and Devon Toews in Colorado (24-7-19-26).

1993 (1,430 GP) (CF 51.78)

As you can see by the decline in games for the 28 to 29 year old age group, players start to get replaced by younger players as factors like unrestricted free agency, declining skills and salary cap issues come into play. The players that remain are theoretically solid players and that comes through as this age group is the second highest rated in the NHL this season.

Jonathan Huberdeau in Florida (38-15-38-53) is having a career year and in the West, Johnny Gaudreau in Calgary (34-15-24-39), J.T. Miller in Vancouver (38-12-26-38), Tomas Hertl in San Jose (39-20-11-31) and Mark Scheifele in Winnipeg (28-9-14-23) are among the best so far.

1992 (1,637 GP) (CF 49.17)

Gabriel Landeskog in Colorado (27-14-22-36) leads the 29 to 30 year-olds while Mikael Granlund (37-5-28-33) and Ryan Johansen (36-10-20-30) are both enjoying resurgent years in Nashville. Mark Stone from Vegas (22-7-18-25) has battled some injuries but has played well when in the lineup.

Some players struggling in the West are Tyler Seguin in Dallas (35-9-4-13) and Joonas Donskoi in Seattle (37-0-14-14). Seguin is returning from a pretty severe injury while Donskoi has yet to score this season after 17 goals last year.

The 1992 group as a whole are below the league average and indicate the age point that players can drop off.

1991 (1,363 GP) (CF 50.52)

The New York Rangers have a lock on two of the best 30 and 31 year-olds in the league in Artemi Panarin (34-10-28-38) and Chris Kreider (39-24-11-35).

In the West, Vladimir Tarasenko in St. Louis (34-14-20-34) has his game back after missing most of the last two seasons. Matt Duchene in Nashville (35-17-17-34) and Reilly Smith in Vegas (39-11-18-29) have both had comeback seasons.

Some players that aren't as effective as in prior seasons are Ryan O'Reilly (34-8-16-24) and Brayden Schenn in St. Louis (22-5-7-12) along with Tyson Barrie in Edmonton (37-4-13-17).

Slightly better than the 1992 group, but the 1991 players are still slightly below average.

1990 (1,241 GP) (CF 50.05)

Nazem Kadri is an anomaly at 31 years of age to have the season (32-14-35-49) he is having, as he has never had even close to this type of production before (save his 18 points in 15 playoff games in 2019-20).

Tampa Bay has Steven Stamkos (39-18-28-46) and Victor Hedman (40-7-33-40) who are both having excellent, healthy seasons so far.

Others in the West are Roman Josi in Nashville (37-13-26-39) who is on pace for 80 points and Jonathan Marchessault (34-18-9-27) and Alex Pietrangelo (37-6-18-24) in Vegas.

1989 (1,046 GP) (CF 49.06)

Leaders of this group are Alex Killorn in Tampa Bay (40-12-24-36) and Logan Couture in San Jose (35-13-17-30) and Drew Doughty in Los Angeles (19-4-15-19).

After that there is a bit of a dropoff, particularly in the West, with Kevin Shattenkirk in Anaheim (41-6-15-21) and Jamie Benn in Dallas (35-9-8-17) being among the better producers.

The 32 to 33-year old group is below the league average.

1988 (522 GP) (CF 50.28)

There is a sharp drop in the number of games played as this is the first group under 600 games since the 2001 age group.

Brad Marchand of Boston (30-20-23-43) is almost single-handedly propping the 33 and 34 year-olds on his back, along with Patrick Kane in Chicago (34-9-24-33). Kane is under a point per game for only the second time in the last 10 seasons.

If Max Pacioretty in Vegas (16-12-9-21) could stay healthy he would be higher on this list, but injuries are a recurring theme for every age group going forward. Jonathan Toews in Chicago (38-5-14-19) has struggled a little this season, but he did miss all of last year, so he needs the benefit of the doubt.

1987 (665 GP) (CF 50.21)

This used to be known as the Sidney Crosby group (25-5-20-25) and  he has played well since returning from injury. Anze Kopitar in Los Angeles (38-11-23-34), Mats Zuccarello in Minnesota (28-11-19-30) and his teammate Kris Letang in Pittsburgh (33-3-29-32) are having excellent seasons so far.

Some of this group are not what they were, including Phil Kessel in Arizona (36-5-20-25), Marc-Edouard Vlasic in San Jose (32-0-7-7) and Jeff Petry in Montreal (29-1-2-3).

The 34- and 35-year-olds are just slightly below average on the whole.

1986 (256 GP) (CF 47.43)

A broken group (literally) that includes Evgeni Malkin in Pittsburgh (3-2-1-3), Blake Wheeler in Winnipeg (22-1-16-17), T.J. Oshie in Washington (18-5-8-13), Alexander Edler in Los Angeles (26-1-10-11).

The only healthy players are Keith Yandle in Florida (37-0-13-13), Alexander Radulov in Dallas (31-1-11-12), Tyler Bozak in St. Louis (31-1-6-7) and Derek Ryan in Edmonton (31-2-0-2). Ryan leads the healthy guys with two goals.

At 35 or 36 years of age, it appears that you're either injured or your play has declined.

1985 (443 GP) (CF 48.37)

When I started plotting the numbers for this article, this was the most unexpected result. A group of 36 and 37 year old players leading the league in production and impact per player.

Led by the incomparable Alex Ovechkin in Washington (39-26-28-54) along with Patrice Bergeron in Boston (34-11-19-30) at the top of the list.

The other prominent players in the West are Brent Burns in San Jose (39-4-22-26), Ryan Getzlaf in Anaheim (33-2-22-24) and Alex Goligoski in Minnesota (29-3-18-21).

I think I'd written off three quarters of these players before the start of this season.

1984 (144 GP) (CF 51.61)

Joe Pavelski from Dallas (35-15-21-36) dominates this collection of players that includes Dustin Brown in Los Angeles (35-6-11-17), Zach Parise with the Islanders (30-1-7-8), Brian Boyle in Pittsburgh (25-4-0-4) and Nate Thompson in Philadelphia (19-1-0-1).

Only Pavelski and Brown should be in the league next season.

1983 (89 GP) (CF 51.00)

Only three players make up this age bracket. Jason Spezza in Toronto (32-7-5-12), Mark Giordano in Seattle (31-4-8-12) and Duncan Keith in Edmonton (26-1-8-9).

Only Giordano is still an above average player, whereas Spezza and Keith are still above replacement level, so it is likely all three are back in the league next season if they wish.

1982 and older (74 GP) (CF 48.33)

We will go from youngest to oldest here. Born in 1982 is Andy Greene with the Islanders (26-1-4-5) and he is currently below replacement level. Born in 1979 is Joe Thornton in Florida (21-4-2-6) and even though he is only playing 10:56 a night he is still contributing. Born in 1977 and the oldest player in the NHL is Zdeno Chara with the Islanders (27-0-2-2) at 44 years of age. He is physical, blocks shots and is averaging 18:40 of ice per night.

It is obvious that all three of these players are still in the NHL due to their intangibles that no stat will ever pick up. Having said that, I don't think any of them will be playing next season.

I thought I would include the Corsi numbers for a pinch of defensive context. I wasn't sure how they would play out, but it looks like younger players take a few years to get on the positive side of things (above 50). Maybe coaches know what they're doing a little when they play the veteran over the young guy in certain points of the game.

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you want me to focus on any players or topics by messaging me below or following me on Twitter @gampbler15.