The NHL is a young man's game.
Most players hit their peak level of production in the league around their 25th birthdays and then slowly see their production start to slide away over the years that follow. A quick look at the NHL's scoring leaderboard reveals a list of players that are mostly under the age of 26. But even though youth is king in the NHL, that doesn't mean there aren't some players that are defying their age.
At the top of the list has to be 43-year-old Florida Panthers forward Jaromir Jagr.
We've talked about him quite a bit this season, including the fact that he has been playing in the NHL longer than a large portion of the league has been alive while the second oldest player in the league is nearly four years younger than him. He has already recorded 21 points in his first 28 games for the Panthers this season which puts him on a pace for close to 60 points this season. No player age 43 or older in the NHL has ever recorded more than 43 points in a single season (Mark Messier for the Vancouver Canucks back in 2003-04).
It's not only extremely rare for a player at this age to still be playing in the NHL, it is almost unheard of for them to be playing this well.
But he isn't the only player that is exceeding expectations based on age. Let's take a quick look at a few more.
Zdeno Chara, age 38, Boston Bruins: The Bruins' defense has been letting talent slip away for a couple of years now. That exodus, combined with some of the most important holdovers getting older, has turned one of the best defensive teams in the league into what is probably on its best day a below average unit.
That doesn't mean they're all playing poorly, and Chara, now in his age 38 season, is once again their go-to guy on defense. Watch him play and it is easy to see that he has definitely lost a step or two, and he's not quite the dominant force he was a few years ago when the Bruins were challenging for the Stanley Cup, but he's still playing more than 24 minutes per night and playing like a top-pairing defender.
The only players in league history (at least as far back as time-on-ice stats are tracked) that have been able to take on the same type of workload as Chara at this age and produced similar results are Al MacInnis, Nicklas Lidstrom, Ray Bourque and Chris Chelios. Pretty good company to keep.
Roberto Luongo, age 36, Florida Panthers: The Panthers are a fascinating team because they are generally viewed as a young team with guys like Aaron Ekblad, Jonathan Huberdeau, Aleksander Barkov and Nick Bjugstad on the roster. But even with those guys they are still one of the oldest teams in the NHL (by average age) due to the presence of guys like Jagr, Brian Campbell, Willie Mitchell and Dave Bolland. Also on that list: starting goalie Roberto Luongo, and he's slipping under the radar for what he is doing this season.
Most goalies don't tend to age well once they start getting into their mid-to-late 30s, especially when they have had a workload like Luongo has carried during his career. But Luongo is as good as he's ever been in Florida, and currently has a .925 save percentage this season.
Since the NHL started tracking save percentage, only 13 goals have ever played in at least 20 games over the age of 35 and finished a season with a save percentage higher than .920, while their average performance was only .903. And here is Luongo still rolling along as one of the top goalies in the league.
Pavel Datsyuk, age 37, Detroit Red Wings: The days of Datsyuk being a 90-point scorer are long gone, and even though he's managed just eight points in 16 games this season you shouldn't underestimate his impact on the Red Wings. Detroit is 8-3-5 (that is a 107-point pace over 82 games) since he returned to the lineup this season and his still great two-way play is a big part of that success.
He is playing 20 minutes a night while the Red Wings are outscoring their opponents 8-3 and attempting close to 60 percent of the shot attempts with him on the ice during 5-on-5 play. He is still a game-changing player every time he steps on the ice, even at the age of 37.
Andrei Markov, age 37, Montreal Canadiens: What's most impressive about Markov's play in recent years isn't just the fact that he is still a 22-minute per night defenseman that can put 50 points on the board over a full season.
It's the fact that his career looked like it could have been over -- or at least on that path -- a few years ago due to constant injury problems that limited him to just 65 out of a possible 246 games between the 2009-10 and 2011-12 seasons. He has not only come back from that, he has been a rock on the Canadiens' blue line, missing just two games over the past four years and still scoring like a top defender. His 0.59 points per game since 2012-13 is 14th among all defensemen (minimum 100 games played) over that stretch.
Sure, a lot of that production is power play based, but there is still a value in that ability to produce.
Henrik and Daniel Sedin, age 35, Vancouver Canucks: The Sedin's are still a few years behind the other guys on this list in terms of their age, but they're not exactly young players anymore, either. I even thought about including a player like San Jose Sharks forward Patrick Marleau ahead of them on here. But the fact they are able to maintain close to a point-per-game average at this age, in a league where only a handful of players are able to score at that level, is an incredible accomplishment. Especially when they are still able to make plays that only the two of them can make. They are not only two of the top-11 scorers in the league so far this season, they are the only two players in the top-45 that are over the age of 34.
