In 2011 Malcom Gladwell’s book “Outlier: The Story Of Success” he has a chapter on hockey and how much of an advantage it is for kids to be born earlier in the year.
In minor hockey you are grouped in your birth year but kids born in January on average will be bigger, taller and stronger than kids born in December. This gives the earlier-in-the-year born kids a head start and a big advantage.
The theory is that players born earlier in the year will, for the most part, be the better players than other kids in their age group, so growing up, they will continue to be on the best teams, play with and against better players, get better coaching and the players born later in the year will struggle to ever be at the same level.
This doesn’t guarantee that late birthday’s mean no success as Mario Lemieux was born in October, Sidney Crosby in August and 2014 WHL MVP Sam Reinhart in November.
As of October 31, 2017 there were 534 players in the WHL.
The numbers include Import players and American born players so this is not an in depth look at Canadian minor hockey.
This is just some research to see if the numbers show any trends in the WHL.
October 31, 2017
| 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | Total | |
| January | 11 | 18 | 20 | 34 | 8 | 91 |
| February | 7 | 12 | 16 | 19 | 5 | 59 |
| March | 12 | 18 | 16 | 16 | 5 | 67 |
| April | 3 | 17 | 16 | 22 | 2 | 60 |
| May | 8 | 10 | 14 | 16 | 3 | 51 |
| June | 7 | 12 | 12 | 9 | 5 | 45 |
| July | 5 | 11 | 16 | 14 | 7 | 53 |
| August | 3 | 6 | 3 | 6 | 1 | 19 |
| September | 3 | 9 | 9 | 6 | 2 | 29 |
| October | 3 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 2 | 25 |
| November | 3 | 5 | 9 | 2 | 1 | 20 |
| December | 2 | 6 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 15 |
| 67 | 131 | 141 | 154 | 41 | 534 |
The Stats show …
– 69.9% of all players were born January-June.
– 51.9% were born January-April, 31.5% May-August and 16.7% September-December.
– 40.6% were born January-March, 29.2% April-June, 18.9% July-September and 11.2% October-December.
– 17.0% were born in January, 2.8% in December.
– There are more players born in January, 2000 (34) than all the players from 1997-2001 born in August (19), September (29), October (25), November (20) or December (15).
– January has 91 players which is more than September (29), October (25), November (20) and December (15) combined 89.
As a reference here are the totals from last season.
January 3, 2017
| 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | |
| January 86 | 10 | 21 | 21 | 17 | 17 |
| February 63 | 8 | 13 | 11 | 20 | 11 |
| March 72 | 9 | 17 | 22 | 17 | 7 |
| April 67 | 8 | 15 | 17 | 19 | 8 |
| May 55 | 9 | 15 | 10 | 17 | 4 |
| June 46 | 3 | 17 | 12 | 13 | 1 |
| July 38 | 2 | 11 | 10 | 13 | 2 |
| August 18 | 4 | 6 | 7 | 1 | 0 |
| September 31 | 3 | 8 | 12 | 8 | 0 |
| October 21 | 5 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 1 |
| November 18 | 1 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 1 |
| December 16 | 0 | 6 | 7 | 2 | 1 |
| Total 531 | 62 | 138 | 141 | 137 | 53 |
