Physicality and NHL Playoff Success: How Size, Hits, and PIM Relate to Postseason Results

The NHL regular season often feels like a mere prologue to the playoffs, where the intensity increases — and the quality of the product improves as the league's least impressive teams get eliminated.

The 2024-25 campaign fits that characterization better than most. Less than halfway through December, according to The Athletic's projections, fourteen teams have an 88% or greater chance of making the playoffs.  Based on these projections, teams can already tweak their rosters with the postseason in mind.

Since the beginning of October, thirteen trades have been completed, ten of which included one of the fourteen teams extremely likely to reach the postseason. 

With several franchises already planning their endgame, this research examines how physicality is connected to the playoff success they're seeking. It's common for teams to value large players who play a rough style of game for the postseason. 

The Boston Bruins' acquisition of 6-foot-3, 234-pound forward Pat Maroon before the 2023-24 playoffs was a good example, and similar trades are likely to occur before the 2024-25 postseason.

Players likely to be available who are notable for their size or punishing style include, but are not limited to:

• C Brock Nelson (6-foot-4, 210 pounds)
• D Ivan Provorov (6-foot-1, 213 pounds)
• D Rasmus Ristolainen (6-foot-4, 208 pounds)
• LW Pat Maroon (6-foot-3, 234 pounds)
• D Ian Cole (6-foot-1, 225 pounds)
• D David Savard (6-foot-1, 238 pounds)

The conventional wisdom around the game is that size, physicality, and nastiness win in the battle for the Stanley Cup. The defending champion Florida Panthers, who ranked first in the NHL in hits and penalty minutes in 2023-24, support this notion.

Last season is an example of how physicality contributes to playoff success, but when looking at the last 10 Stanley Cup winners, there is significant variance in those metrics.

By examining the 150 playoff series that have taken place over the last ten seasons, we'll get a better idea of whether teams with a physical edge, like the 2023-24 Panthers, truly thrive in the postseason or are an exception to the norm.

There is no perfect way to measure NHL physicality as the game includes altercations that can’t be captured by any statistic. 

For instance, the type of pushing, shoving, cross-checking, and face-washing that characterizes action after the whistle during playoff games is usually invisible in the box score, and there is an agitating class of players known as ‘pests’ who pride themselves in getting under opponents’ skin without dropping the gloves or delivering massive open-ice hits.

Even so, there are some metrics we can lean on to help determine which teams are the most physically imposing, and this research leans on three:

1. Hits - Intentionally initiated contact with the player possessing the puck, causing that player to lose possession of the puck. Loss of possession may or may not involve a turnover. We looked at regular-season team hit totals because they came from a more reliable sample size than hits in best-of-seven playoff series.
2. Penalty Minutes (PIM) - Number of minutes a player or team has been assessed for various rule infractions. Definitions of the types of penalties in hockey are detailed in the NHL Rulebook. We analyzed regular-season PIM totals because they came from a larger and more reliable sample size than PIM in a best-of-seven playoff series.
3. Size - The average weight of the players (excluding goaltenders) who appeared for that team during the postseason in question. Size does not perfectly correlate to aggressive play, but large players and teams should be better equipped to win puck battles on the board and push their opponents around.

Penalty minutes are not generally considered a firmly positive statistic, as accruing penalties can put teams in short-handed positions where they are far more likely to concede goals and rarely score any of their own. 

For example, during 2023-24, the best teams in the NHL by goal differential when shorthanded were the Philadelphia Flyers and Carolina Hurricanes, both of whom produced a -24 margin when down a man.

That said, high penalty minute totals are also associated with the kind of physical aggressiveness often attributed to teams that succeed in the playoffs. That made it difficult to hypothesize whether teams that rack up high penalty minutes would perform well in the postseason, or not.

In the 150 playoff series’ since 2014-15, the team that ranked higher in PIM total during the regular season won 46.66% of the time. 

However, there was a notable split between the last five playoffs and the five before:

Five postseasons may seem like a small sample, but it includes 75 playoff series. In the last 75 series, the team with more PIM won 40 times.

This information alone is insufficient to suggest a shift in recent postseasons, but there are similar trends in our other metrics.

Like penalty minutes, there is a negative competitive connotation associated with hits. While physically removing opponents from the puck is positive, you can only do so if you don’t have the puck in the first place.

That means that teams at the top of the hits leaderboard may be squads that are chasing around opponents who are dominating puck possession rather than teams that play in an admirably physical fashion.

The playoff results for teams that hit more than their opponents closely mirrored the PIM results, with a slightly higher overall series win percentage that stayed below 50 (49.33%):

This supports the idea that recent playoff series have become more physical than those immediately before. 

The 2023-24 Panthers were the first Stanley Cup winners to top the NHL in hits during the regular season. Meanwhile, the Tampa Bay Lightning teams that won in 2019-20 and 2020-21 also played a physical game, finishing in the top 10 for hits in both of their championship runs.

Unlike the previous two metrics, there is no competitive disadvantage associated with size. Larger players can be slower or less skilled than smaller ones, but that’s not guaranteed. 

Size is often used to explain why teams excel in the playoffs — like when the 2022-23 Vegas Golden Knights were lauded for their enormous group of defensemen — and there isn’t a tangible downside. 

This means that of the three physicality metrics measured in this research, it seemed most likely to yield a demonstrative advantage in playoff series. And yet, the series winning percentage of teams with a size advantage was similar to what we saw with the previous two metrics:

An obvious conclusion to draw from this information is that bigger teams hit more often and take more penalties, and these metrics often count the same thing three times. 

There are cases where that aligns, but it’s not a foregone conclusion by any stretch. For instance, the notoriously nasty 2023-24 Panthers had an average weight of 200.9 pounds — ranking ninth among the 16 playoff teams that year.

On the other hand, the 2018-19 St. Louis Blues ranked 24th in both hits and PIM that season, but they are the only champion in our sample with the highest average weight in its playoff field (206.7 pounds). 

The broader trends in these metrics align, but they are not as closely related as their overall results indicate.

While overall series wins don’t seem to be driven too much by hits, PIM, or size, we see something slightly different with Stanley Cup winners.

Zeroing in on championship teams reduces our overall sample from 150 series’ to 40. This should be taken with a grain of salt, but champions, particularly recent ones, appeared to be more physical than their competition.

The last 10 NHL champions have had an advantage in size and hits in 55% of the series they’ve played. The previous five have been more physical than their opponents according to these measures in a significant majority of their series:

It is intriguing that, overall, the sample of champions had more PIM than their opponents less than half of the time (45%), which could be a nod to the downside associated with penalties.

Of the ten championship teams, three — the 2015-16 and 2016-17 Pittsburgh Penguins and the 2022-23 Golden Knights — were in the top half of the NHL in hits during the regular season but bottom third in PIM. This measured physicality could be a good recipe for playoff success, and there are no counterexamples of high-PIM, low-hit teams that won it all.

There has been a notable trend of more physical teams performing better recently, and that’s also true with the latest Stanley Cup winners. Each of the last five champions has been in the top half of NHL leaderboards in either hits or PIM, with three in the top five in penalty minutes.

Meanwhile, four of the five Stanley Cup champs between 2014-15 and 2018-19 were in the bottom third of the NHL in PIM.

Regarding the Stanley Cup Finals, it is difficult to draw too many conclusions from just 10 series’. Still, it is notable that six of the last seven winners have had a size advantage over their opponents, supporting the idea that the playoffs have become more hospitable for tougher teams as of late.

• Bigger, nastier teams have had more success recently: In the last five years, teams that hit more, take more penalties, or have a size advantage over their opponents have all won more than half the time.
• Stanley Cup Champions have a physical edge: The last 10 champions have had a size advantage and hit advantage in 55% of their series, and those percentages have climbed recently.
• Physicality is not a silver bullet: Based on what’s happened in the last ten years, it would be impossible to say that bigger, more physical teams are definitively better or worse than their opponents in the playoffs. It’s more likely that other factors, such as offensive efficiency, special teams, and goaltending, are playing a more significant role.
• High PIM totals correlate less to playoff success than hits or size: While a few recent champions have spent plenty of time in the penalty box, the team with a higher regular-season PIM total has only won 46.66% of playoff series over the last 10 years.