Happy (belated and early) birthday to two NHL legends!
Just over 10 days ago, Sidney Crosby passed the 8/7 threshold again and turned 39 years old. And just under a month from now, Alex Ovechkin will turn 41, on Sept. 17.
Sid doesn’t show any signs of slowing down and earlier this summer Ovi confirmed he’s coming back for one more twirl, this time through an 84-game NHL schedule.
While Crosby still has one year to go before hitting the big 4-0, Ovechkin will be the third-oldest skater in the league behind fellow 1985-born players Brent Burns (March 9) and Corey Perry (May 16). It’s not unheard of to have three skaters playing at least 40 games in their age-41 (or older) season, but it last happened in the pandemic-shortened 2020-21 campaign (Zdeno Chara, Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau) and has occurred only four times in the history of the league (all since 2003).
As such, we wanted to honour the ageless warriors out there by identifying the best seasons by a player — including skaters and goalies — aged 41 or older in NHL history. For this exercise, we’ll use the parameters employed by the wonderful Hockey Reference and determine a player’s age for a given season based on how old he is on Jan. 31 of a given campaign.
Without further adieu — because we know older people don’t like to wait — here are the ranked best senior citizen showings in league history.
1. Gordie Howe, Detroit Red Wings, 41 years old, 1969-70
In the second-last season of his first NHL act, “Mr. Hockey” scored 31 goals and 71 points while playing the full 76-game slate. Howe finished sixth in MVP voting basically 25 years after his NHL debut, in 1946-47.
2. Jacques Plante, Toronto Maple Leafs, 42 years old, 1970-71
As this list will reveal, there’s actually a pretty rich history of over-40 goalies performing well in the NHL. Two years after winning the Vezina Trophy at age 40 in 1969 — remember, before the early 1980s, the Vezina was simply given to the goalie who played at least 25 games for the team that allowed the fewest goals — Plante led the league with an incredible .944 save percentage in 40 outings. That mark was 22 points higher than No. 2 that year, Eddie Giacomin of the New York Rangers.
3. Nick Lidstrom, Detroit Red Wings, 41 years old, 2011-12
One year after winning his seventh Norris Trophy, Lidstrom finished fifth in Norris voting in the final season of his immaculate career. Lidstrom logged a team-high 23:46 per night that season and only 10 defencemen scored more than his 11 goals (in just 70 games).
4. Jaromir Jagr, Florida Panthers, 43 years old, 2015-16
Playing for his eighth NHL franchise, Jagr netted 27 goals and 66 points for a Florida team that finished first in the Atlantic Division. The only Panther to score more goals than Jagr that year was a young 20-year-old buck named Aleksander Barkov, who posted 28. Jagr received MVP votes 25 years after he debuted as an 18-year-old with the Penguins.
5. Johnny Bower, Toronto Maple Leafs, 43 years old, 1967-68
True story: Beginning in 1963-64 — in his age-39 season — Bower posted the league’s best save percentage (and, on one occasion, tied for it) in five straight campaigns. Of all those years, we must highlight the final one because he threw down a .934 — the best mark of his five-year run — at age 43.
Unreal.
6. Dominik Hasek, Detroit Red Wings, 42 years old, 2007 Stanley Cup Playoffs
Ottawa Senators fans will tell you, one year prior, their season went off the rails when a 41-year-old Hasek — who had a .925 save percentage — sustained a season-ending abductor injury while representing the Czech Republic at the 2006 Olympics. Hasek then returned to the Red Wings and, in the spring of 2007, recorded a .923 SP and microscopic 1.79 goals-against average in 18 post-season outings as the Wings lost the Western Conference final in six games to the eventual Cup champs from Anaheim.
7. Zdeno Chara, Boston Bruins, 41 years old, 2018-19
Chara was limited to 62 regular season games during his second-last Bruins campaign, but he played 23 games in the 2019 playoffs and averaged 21:28 of ice time per night as the B’s made it to — and lost — Game 7 of the final.
8. Dwayne Roloson, Tampa Bay Lightning, 41 years old, 2011 Stanley Cup Playoffs
“Rolie the Goalie” had a fantastic run five years earlier in Edmonton, when he propelled the Oilers to a shocking appearance in the 2006 Cup final, only to get hurt in Game 1 versus Carolina.
In 2011, Roloson backed the Lightning to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final, losing that match 1-0 in Boston to the Bruins. Roloson finished the post-season with a .924 save percentage in 18 games. The only goalie who finished with a higher mark that year was Conn Smythe Trophy-winning Tim Thomas of the Bruins (.940).
Of course, Thomas was a relative spring chicken at age 36.
9. Chris Chelios, Detroit Red Wings, 46 years old, 2007-08
Chelios got a late jump relative to most of the guys on this list, as he didn’t become a full-time NHLer until the age of 23. He more than made up for it on the back end, though, playing past his 48th birthday. At 46 years old, Chelios average almost 17 minutes a night for the Wings. He also suited up for 14 playoff games, as Detroit claimed the 2008 title.
10. Mark Recchi, Boston Bruins, 42 years old, 2010-11
Recchi played the final of his 22 seasons in 2010-11 and went out on a high, winning this third ring. The winger was an important player for the Bruins in the 2011 post-season, netting 14 points in 25 outings. The year prior, at age 41, Recchi put up 10 points in just 13 playoff games.
11. Gordie Howe, Hartford Whalers, 51 years old, 1979-80
We’ve got to bookend this with Howe, who turned 52 right at the end of his 32nd and final pro hockey campaign. No. 9 didn’t just lace up his skates for the Whalers that season; he added 15 goals and netted one more in three playoff appearances.
