Among all 1,038 players who appeared in the NHL in 2025–26, 333 were born from January through March and 206 from October through December. Early selection helps explain the gap; the count cannot predict one child’s NHL odds.
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Quick terms
Relative age effect
A selection pattern in which players born earlier in an age-group year are represented more often than their later-born teammates.
Birth-year cutoff
The date a league uses to place players into age groups. Under a calendar-year cutoff, January-born players are the oldest in the group.
Biological maturation
The timing and pace of physical development. Players the same chronological age can differ considerably in size, strength, and coordination.
Flex
The shaft’s stiffness rating. Lower numbers generally bend with less force.
At a young tryout, part of that age gap can look like a talent gap.
We counted every skater and goalie who appeared in at least one NHL regular-season game in 2025–26: 1,038 players in all. Of those, 333 were born from January through March. Only 206 were born from October through December.
The NHL had 1.62 early-year players for every late-year player. January was the busiest birth month, with 113 players. December had 61.
That is the birthday gap. It is still visible at the top of the sport, especially among players born in Canada. It begins much earlier than the NHL.
Every birthday in the 2025–26 NHL
The sample contains 940 skaters and 98 goalies from the NHL’s complete skater (opens in a new tab) and goalie (opens in a new tab) reports. We matched each unique NHL player ID to the birth date in the league’s official player profile. Traded players appear once. All 1,038 profiles had a birth date. We pulled the records on August 17, after the season was complete.
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Discussion
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Birth month
Players
Birth month
Players
January
113
July
91
February
110
August
67
March
110
September
70
April
90
October
77
May
106
November
68
June
75
December
61
The quarter view makes the slope easier to see.
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Part of the year
NHL players
Share
January–March
333
32.1%
April–June
271
26.1%
July–September
228
22.0%
October–December
206
19.8%
Short call-ups are part of an NHL season, so they belong in the main sample. The result barely moves when we require at least ten games: among 850 players, the shares run 31.3, 26.1, 22.5 and 20.1 percent from the first quarter to the fourth.
The skater count carries the pattern. The 940 skaters split 310, 242, 205 and 183 by quarter. The 98 goalies split 23, 29, 23 and 23. One season of 98 goalies is too small to settle whether their development path works differently.
Why the calendar matters in minor hockey
Hockey Canada calculates a player’s age on December 31 of the current season. In a single-year group, January players are nearly a year older than teammates born at the end of December. Even a two-year division keeps the same ordering within each birth year.
This birth-year cutoff creates the conditions for a pattern researchers call the relative age effect. During childhood and adolescence, months of growth can show up in height, strength, coordination and experience. At a tryout, those differences can shape which players look ready for the stronger team, more ice time and stronger competition. Those opportunities can build on one another.
A 2025 study of 2,211 male players (opens in a new tab) from Swedish hockey high schools examined relative age alongside biological maturation, the timing and pace of physical development. January–March players had about twice the odds of making the national U16 team as October–December players. Relative age did not significantly predict who later reached the NHL in that selected group. Maturation timing was more informative for adult success.
The Canadian numbers are sharper
The NHL profiles list 422 players as born in Canada. Their quarter counts were 148, 123, 91 and 60. That works out to 2.47 January–March players for every October–December player.
Ordinary birth patterns cannot explain that spread. We matched the 392 Canadian-born NHL players born from 1991 through 2007 to the national monthly live-birth counts in Statistics Canada table 13-10-0415-01 (opens in a new tab). Based on the birth years represented in the NHL sample, the expected counts were 95.20 players in the first quarter and 92.79 in the fourth. We observed 141 and 52. Across all four quarters, the difference was large (chi-square 45.28, 3 degrees of freedom, p approximately 8.08 × 10⁻¹⁰).
This comparison uses Canadian birth totals as a reference for the Canadian-born players whose birth years the table covers. The NHL profile’s birth country is not a record of citizenship or where a player learned hockey. Some Canadian-born players developed elsewhere, and some players born elsewhere developed in Canada.
General birth totals cover far more people than the pool that enters organized hockey. This remains a representation comparison rather than a probability calculation for one child.
The draft has another date
The youth calendar is only one clock in the system. Under the NHL collective bargaining agreement (opens in a new tab), the first draft-eligible window for an 18-year-old runs from January 1 before the draft through September 15 after it. A birthday just beyond September 15 usually moves that first eligible draft to the following year.
That September date reshuffles who is old and young within a draft class. Players arriving in the NHL have passed through youth cutoffs, junior eligibility, the draft and several years of roster decisions. Different countries add their own development systems to the mix.
The overlapping calendars are one reason an NHL birth chart captures only part of the development path.
The players who survive are a selected group
Later-born players are less common by the time the draft arrives. The ones who do arrive may be a particularly strong group.
A study of NHL drafts from 1980 through 2006 (opens in a new tab) compared draft position with later production. Players born in the third and fourth quarters were selected more than 40 places later than their career output suggested. Within that already-drafted group, fourth-quarter players were roughly twice as likely as first-quarter players to reach benchmarks such as 400 NHL games or 200 points.
That comparison begins with drafted players, a group that has already survived years of selection. The later career numbers describe survivor filtering. Any claimed developmental benefit from a late birthday would go beyond the evidence. Arrival and performance are two different questions.
Equipment still has to fit the player
For parents, the practical lesson appears long before any draft conversation. Two players in the same age group can need very different equipment.
Fit the body and movement the player has now. Helmet fit comes from the head, skate fit from the foot and heel, protective sizing from coverage, and stick length and flex from the player’s current strength and mechanics. Oversized skates that let the heel move or a stick that is too stiff to load can make the game harder for a smaller late-year player.
An early-year player who is bigger today may need a different size from a younger teammate. Size at ten remains one detail among position, mechanics, comfort and growth.
What the birthday gap means
The gap is clear at the level of the hockey system. Early-year players were overrepresented among the skaters who appeared in the 2025–26 NHL, and the Canadian-born gap was especially wide. Youth and junior research shows where that sorting can begin.
The chart stops short of NHL odds for one child. A real probability would need the birthdays of everyone who entered hockey, along with country, birth year, registration, development path and years of participation. The NHL data covers only the small group that made it through.
Birth month is useful context when a young player is being compared with teammates. It remains a poor forecast of where that player will finish.