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When discussing draft prospects for the NHL, one thing you'll often hear said about a highly-talented but small-in-stature player is that “he's too small for the NHL.” The implication is that you need to be of a certain size to be able to compete at hockey's highest level, presumably due to the presence of big, bruising defensemen who can pound little guys into the ice without breaking a sweat.
You might be asking yourself about Martin St. Louis right about now. He's certainly very small by NHL standards; he's usually listed at 5'9”, but that's when he's wearing skates. However, he was the leading scorer on the 2004 Cup champion Lightning. He's a two-time All-Star and a winner of the Art Ross, Hart and Lester B. Pearson awards. If being small is such a crippling deficiency for success in the NHL, St. Louis hasn't gotten the memo.
St. Louis might be the sole exception. The argument that almost all small players struggle in the NHL would be fine if St. Louis were the only exception, or one of a handful. He isn't though. Mike Cammalleri, Derek Roy, Ray Whitney, Jiri Hudler are all additional exceptions. So are Brian Gionta, Sergei Samsonov, Nigel Dawes, Eric Perrin, Steve Sullivan, Jordin Tootoo, Sean Avery, and Scott Nichol. Not to mention Saku Koivu, Mike Comrie, Marc Savard and Darcy Tucker. There are more of course, depending on where you draw the line of “too small.”
Any exception to this rule is generally explained away with the phrase “he doesn't play small," leaving to the listener to determine exactly what that might mean. It seems to imply that smaller players will naturally be less aggressive, or less able to handle physical play. One would think that if “not playing small” had some real meaning in terms of play on the ice, reflecting something real about how a player plays the game, scouts would be able to detect it when scouting the player. Size would therefore become irrelevant in drafting players, since teams would know which ones “play small” and which ones do not. However, scouts clearly cannot make this determination. Martin St. Louis, Hart Trophy winner, scoring titleist and Stanley Cup champion, was never drafted. Not a single team thought him worth even an 11th-round draft pick. Not a single NHL team thought he was worth a free-agent contract when he finished his schooling. He had to sign with an independent IHL team before NHL teams would take a look at him. Sean Avery, who is probably the closest thing to a poster boy for the concept of “not playing small," was also not drafted.
The NHL's draft history is littered with under-drafted small players who went on to be effective NHL players. (It's also cluttered with over-drafted physical hulks who fail to make an impression at the major-league level, but that's another column.) I suggest that the reason scouts are apparently unable to determine which small players don't play small is that “not playing small” does not enter into it. It's a post hoc rationalization as to why a small player, who they swore was “too small," is now starring in the NHL. A player makes the NHL, and stays there, based on his ability to play hockey at an extremely high level, and his desire to remain there, not based on a measuring tape.
Small players who fail at the NHL level do so not because they are too small, but because they are not good enough, either in terms of talent or ambition. Some are not even given the chance to be sure, but for the most part if a player has the skill and determination to play in the NHL, he will do so. Coaches are presumably more concerned with winning games than with having large players (as an end unto itself), and as such are not about to reject a highly-talented player, even if he is 5'8.
Another explanation often presented for the presence of small players in the NHL is that only the ones that are simply too good to ignore are able to make it. On the surface this may seem to have some merit, given the number of small players among the scoring leaders. As of March 8, Savard, Cammalleri, St. Louis and Roy were all in the top 30 in NHL scoring, with several more small players close behind. But that ignores players like Avery, Perrin, Tootoo and Nichol, who are certainly no threat to win a scoring title. It doesn't make a very convincing argument.
The following are all NHL players who played their entire career in what some refer to as the “modern” era (1967-68 to present), and who are listed at 5'9 or less in Total Hockey (or on the NHL website), and who have played at least 400 NHL games. Career scoring totals are current through March 8, and active players are marked with an asterisk.
Name Hgt GP Pts
Pat Verbeek 5-9 1424 1063
Marcel Dionne 5-9 1348 1771
Cliff Ronning 5-8 1137 869
Butch Goring 5-9 1107 888
Neal Broten 5-9 1099 923
Theoren Fleury 5-6 1084 1088
Joe Mullen 5-9 1062 1063
Keith Acton 5-8 1023 584
Ray Whitney * 5-9 977 790
Doug Jarvis 5-9 964 403
Stan Smyl 5-8 896 673
Curt Giles (D) 5-8 895 242
Dennis Maruk 5-8 888 878
Claude Lapointe 5-9 879 305
Mike O'Connell (D) 5-9 860 439
Doug Smail 5-9 845 459
Ron Wilson 5-9 832 326
Danny Gare 5-9 827 685
Steve Kasper 5-8 821 468
Saku Koivu * 5-9 775 626
Bobby Schmautz 5-9 764 557
Pat Boutette 5-8 756 453
Steve Sullivan * 5-9 748 594
Donald Audette 5-8 735 509
Gerry Hart (D) 5-9 730 179
Sergei Samsonov * 5-8 723 494
Garry Howatt 5-9 720 268
Randy Burridge 5-9 706 450
Tony Tanti 5-9 697 560
Rick Meagher 5-9 691 309
Dennis Kearns (D) 5-9 677 321
Martin St. Louis * 5-9 674 570
Mark Johnson 5-9 669 508
Gregg Sheppard 5-8 657 498
Mats Naslund 5-7 651 634
Bobby Lalonde 5-5 641 334
Errol Thompson 5-9 599 393
Morris Lukowich 5-9 582 418
Jim Fox 5-8 578 479
Daniel Briere * 5-9 574 457
Rey Comeau 5-8 564 239
Simon Nolet 5-9 562 332
Risto Siltanen (D) 5-9 562 355
Pat Conacher 5-8 521 139
Mike Rogers 5-9 484 519
Brian Gionta * 5-7 456 302
Hakan Loob 5-9 450 429
Reijo Ruotsalainen (D) 5-8 446 344
Peter Lee 5-9 431 245
Rick Paterson 5-9 430 93
Eddie Johnstone 5-9 426 258
Stan Jonathan 5-8 411 201
Mark Lamb 5-9 403 146
As you can see, there are players of all levels of offensive and defensive skill, and which cover the spectrum of roles on a hockey team. There are defensive specialists like Jarvis, Lapointe, Kasper and Meagher, and pure scorers like Dionne, Maruk, Rogers and Loob. Throw in a smattering of energy players, third-and-fourth liners, and (to be honest) space-fillers, and you have everything covered.
You will notice a relative lack of defensemen on the list. Defensemen do tend to be taller than forwards, and thus there are fewer defensemen of a specific height than there are forwards. 5'10 is very small for an NHL defenseman, and even 5'11 is not too common. In this regard, at least, the desire for size makes some sense. A larger defender can cover more of the ice, so you really are losing something if your defense corps is too small. But current players like Brian Rafalski, Dan Boyle, Lubomir Visnovsky, Marek Zidlicky, Kimmo Timonen, John-Michael Liles, Marc-Andre Bergeron, Ian White, Mathieu Schneider and Andrew Ference, among others, show that you don't need to be 6 feet tall to play defense in the NHL.
I'm certainly not the first to point out the NHL's obsession with size. According to Jeff Klein and Karl-Eric Reif in The Death of Hockey, “if you lack footballian size and brawn, it's a big red demerit across the top of your scouting report.” While an exagerration, this argument has a smack of truth to it, apparent every year at draft time. Klein and Reif trace this size fixation back to the 1972 Summit Series, which Canada won as much through physical violence as through skill against a faster-skating and trickier-playing USSR squad. This led to size and strength being seen as the new ideal in players. Over the years, “Canadian hockey” came to mean not necessarily the best hockey, but the hardest-hitting hockey. Meanwhile, highly-skilled small players continue to ignore this new rule, and carve out very successful NHL careers.
A rule with this many exceptions is not a rule. It doesn't even qualify as a guideline. It's a truism, plain and simple, and is not supported by reality. Small players do not struggle in the NHL. Many players struggle in the NHL, be they 5'6 or 6'5. When you're scouting a small player, don't lose sight of the talent forest for the stature trees. |
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