How Hockey ChangedMinutes
The NHL Shift Got Shorter, Then Grew Back
Jacques Lemaire’s Minnesota Wild changed lines faster than almost any team in the NHL. Today the Wild stay out longest, and in 2025-26 Quinn Hughes set the longest average shift by a regular since the league began counting. Across the league, forward shifts got shorter every season from 1998-99 to 2003-04. Since the mid-2010s they have grown back to about where they were in 1997-98.
By Edgehalla ResearchPublished 13 min read
Two days after Vancouver traded him, Quinn Hughes played his first game for the Minnesota Wild, a 6-2 home win over Boston on Dec. 14, 2025. In the opening minute of the third period he took a drop pass from Ryan Hartman and “put a low wrist shot between Swayman’s pads to make it 4-0,” the Associated Press reported.
That season he averaged 69.5 seconds a shift, the longest of any regular player, forward or defenceman, since the NHL began counting shifts in 1997-98.
More takeaways below
- There is no sign that a team’s shift length helps or hurts its record. Teams whose forwards stayed out longer finished no higher in the standings, and Stanley Cup winners have come from both ends.
On this page
A forward’s shift lasts 47.6 seconds, and it is growing
He had landed on the team that stays out longest. A quarter-century earlier, under Jacques Lemaire, the same franchise had nearly the shortest shifts in the league.
Hughes is the extreme case of a change across the whole league. NHL forward shifts got shorter every season from 1998-99 to 2003-04 and stayed short for about a dozen more. Since the mid-2010s they have grown back. About two thirds of that growth came from players already in the league staying out longer, and the stars gained the most. Minnesota has been at both ends. Through all of it, teams have won with short shifts and with long ones.
Every time Hughes hopped the boards against Boston and later skated back to the bench, that was one shift. A shift also ends when a period does. In 2025-26 NHL forwards averaged 47.6 seconds a shift and defencemen 49.3. A forward took about 19 shifts a game; a defenceman about 24. When this story says “regular”, it means a player who dressed for at least half of his team’s games.
Forwards averaged 47.6 seconds a shift in 2025-26, and more shifts ran past a minute
In 2025-26 forwards averaged 47.6 seconds a shift (about half of forward shifts ran under 46), defencemen 49.3; 22.2% of forward shifts ran past a minute.
The average comes from the NHL’s own season totals. Add up every skater’s ice time for the season, add up all their shifts, and divide the first total by the second. The shift-by-shift detail below comes from our own count of every shift in every game since 2017-18, 8,317,634 of them, which matches the NHL’s totals to within 0.1 seconds a shift in every season.
Forward shifts shrank until 2003-04, then grew back after 2015-16
The NHL has published shift counts since 1997-98, the first season of its ice-time tables. Forward shifts peaked at 48.7 seconds in 1998-99 and fell every season after that, to 43.9 in 2003-04.
Colorado set the pace. The Avalanche forwards had the league’s shortest shifts for five straight seasons, from 1999-00 to 2003-04. In 2000-01 they won the Stanley Cup with the shortest shifts in the league, 39.36 seconds. No team in any season since 1997-98 has had shorter forward shifts than Colorado in 2001-02, at 37.47. From 2000-01 to 2003-04, the next-shortest team each season was a brand-new one: Lemaire’s Minnesota Wild, who joined the league in 2000-01.
By 2003-04, 63 regular forwards averaged under 40 seconds a shift. Not one regular at either position averaged a minute; in 1997-98, eight had.
Shifts shrank until 2003-04, then grew back after 2015-16
Seconds per shift: league skater ice time divided by shifts, regular season
seconds
Show data
| Season | Defencemen | Forwards |
|---|---|---|
| 1997-98 | 50.6 seconds | 47.7 seconds |
| 1998-99 | 50.9 seconds | 48.7 seconds |
| 1999-00 | 50.9 seconds | 48.4 seconds |
| 2000-01 | 48.7 seconds | 46.6 seconds |
| 2001-02 | 48.9 seconds | 46.3 seconds |
| 2002-03 | 47.3 seconds | 45.0 seconds |
| 2003-04 | 46.5 seconds | 43.9 seconds |
| 2004-05 | – | – |
| 2005-06 | 46.8 seconds | 44.7 seconds |
| 2006-07 | 46.9 seconds | 44.7 seconds |
| 2007-08 | 48.3 seconds | 46.2 seconds |
| 2008-09 | 47.8 seconds | 45.4 seconds |
| 2009-10 | 47.6 seconds | 45.5 seconds |
| 2010-11 | 47.4 seconds | 45.4 seconds |
| 2011-12 | 47.7 seconds | 45.5 seconds |
| 2012-13 | 47.5 seconds | 45.1 seconds |
| 2013-14 | 47.2 seconds | 44.6 seconds |
| 2014-15 | 46.7 seconds | 44.3 seconds |
| 2015-16 | 46.7 seconds | 44.2 seconds |
| 2016-17 | 47.1 seconds | 44.4 seconds |
| 2017-18 | 47.6 seconds | 45.3 seconds |
| 2018-19 | 48.2 seconds | 46.0 seconds |
| 2019-20 | 48.8 seconds | 46.2 seconds |
| 2020-21 | 49.0 seconds | 46.2 seconds |
| 2021-22 | 48.4 seconds | 46.3 seconds |
| 2022-23 | 48.4 seconds | 46.9 seconds |
| 2023-24 | 48.9 seconds | 47.3 seconds |
| 2024-25 | 48.7 seconds | 47.4 seconds |
| 2025-26 | 49.3 seconds | 47.6 seconds |
- 2003-04: Low: 43.9 s
- 2005-06: Post-lockout rules
- 2015-16: Post-lockout low
Then the shrinking stopped. The 2004-05 lockout, a labour dispute between the owners and the players, wiped out a whole season. On both sides of it, forwards stayed between about 44 and 46 seconds a shift for a dozen seasons. The low after the lockout came in 2015-16, at 44.2. Even then one player stayed out. Erik Karlsson of Ottawa averaged 64.2 seconds that season, the longest by any regular from 2012-13 to 2018-19. Since 2015-16 the league average has grown in most seasons, to 47.6 in 2025-26. That is the longest since 1999-00. It is level with 1997-98 (47.7) and still about a second below the 1998-99 peak.
The quick changers gained time too. From 2015-16 to 2025-26, a regular forward near the quick-change end of the list (quicker than nine in ten of his peers) gained about 3 seconds a shift (39.6 to 42.2), and one near the long end (longer than nine in ten) gained about 4 (48.8 to 53.2). Defencemen in 2025-26 averaged their longest shifts since 1999-00.
Longer shifts mean fewer of them. A forward played about 15 minutes a game in both 2015-16 and 2025-26 (slightly more in 2025-26), but in 2025-26 he took about one fewer shift a game: about 19 instead of 20.
Minnesota went from the shortest shifts to the longest
Minnesota has been at both ends of that history. At the Wild’s first training camp, before their first season, Lemaire ran a scrimmage in two 40-minute halves. Scott Pellerin, a seven-year NHL veteran keeping a camp diary for ESPN.com, described it. “Our coach, Jacques Lemaire, blew a whistle when he wanted us to change lines,” he wrote. “He made us play long shifts, one-to-two minutes at a time.”
Pellerin called it “a hard conditioning day,” and wrote that “we didn’t have much left in our tanks.” He remembered “doing that drill when Lemaire was coach in New Jersey.” Between halves, he wrote, Lemaire talked about wanting his players “to be able to make good decisions with the puck and minimize turnovers.”
In games, Lemaire’s Wild changed lines faster than almost anyone. In their first season their forwards averaged 39.40 seconds a shift, second shortest in the league, a fraction of a second behind Colorado. They were second behind Colorado in each of their first four seasons. Then they were shortest outright in the next four, from 2005-06 to 2008-09. In all eight seasons he coached them, the Wild were shortest or second shortest.
Lemaire coached every game the franchise played until he stepped down in April 2009. The Canadian Press wrote of his “distinctly defence-oriented style and demand for discipline and proper positioning on the ice.” Some of his players, it reported, “felt stifled by his trapping, stay-at-home scheme.” (The trap is a defensive system that clogs the middle of the ice to slow the other team down.) At his farewell news conference he said: “They will need this. The team needs this.” The next season the Wild were 10th shortest of 30.
Minnesota went from near the shortest shifts in the league to the longest
Average forward shift, seconds: the Wild, the league, and the shortest and longest team each season
seconds
Show data
| Season | Longest team | League forwards | Shortest team | Minnesota Wild |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1997-98 | 53.7 seconds | 47.7 seconds | 42.0 seconds | – |
| 1998-99 | 55.0 seconds | 48.7 seconds | 43.8 seconds | – |
| 1999-00 | 54.3 seconds | 48.4 seconds | 43.0 seconds | – |
| 2000-01 | 52.9 seconds | 46.6 seconds | 39.4 seconds | 39.4 seconds |
| 2001-02 | 51.0 seconds | 46.3 seconds | 37.5 seconds | 39.7 seconds |
| 2002-03 | 50.7 seconds | 45.0 seconds | 39.3 seconds | 39.4 seconds |
| 2003-04 | 48.8 seconds | 43.9 seconds | 38.5 seconds | 39.6 seconds |
| 2004-05 | – | – | – | – |
| 2005-06 | 49.4 seconds | 44.7 seconds | 40.1 seconds | 40.1 seconds |
| 2006-07 | 49.1 seconds | 44.7 seconds | 39.8 seconds | 39.8 seconds |
| 2007-08 | 50.4 seconds | 46.2 seconds | 40.2 seconds | 40.2 seconds |
| 2008-09 | 51.5 seconds | 45.4 seconds | 40.7 seconds | 40.7 seconds |
| 2009-10 | 52.0 seconds | 45.5 seconds | 42.5 seconds | 44.3 seconds |
| 2010-11 | 49.8 seconds | 45.4 seconds | 42.6 seconds | 45.3 seconds |
| 2011-12 | 49.7 seconds | 45.5 seconds | 40.3 seconds | 44.9 seconds |
| 2012-13 | 49.1 seconds | 45.1 seconds | 39.9 seconds | 43.4 seconds |
| 2013-14 | 48.5 seconds | 44.6 seconds | 42.0 seconds | 44.9 seconds |
| 2014-15 | 47.5 seconds | 44.3 seconds | 40.0 seconds | 46.1 seconds |
| 2015-16 | 48.4 seconds | 44.2 seconds | 40.7 seconds | 46.3 seconds |
| 2016-17 | 48.5 seconds | 44.4 seconds | 41.7 seconds | 45.3 seconds |
| 2017-18 | 49.6 seconds | 45.3 seconds | 41.2 seconds | 47.4 seconds |
| 2018-19 | 51.6 seconds | 46.0 seconds | 41.5 seconds | 47.1 seconds |
| 2019-20 | 51.2 seconds | 46.2 seconds | 42.0 seconds | 47.5 seconds |
| 2020-21 | 51.5 seconds | 46.2 seconds | 42.7 seconds | 50.2 seconds |
| 2021-22 | 52.0 seconds | 46.3 seconds | 43.0 seconds | 52.0 seconds |
| 2022-23 | 53.1 seconds | 46.9 seconds | 43.3 seconds | 53.0 seconds |
| 2023-24 | 54.2 seconds | 47.3 seconds | 43.8 seconds | 54.2 seconds |
| 2024-25 | 55.4 seconds | 47.4 seconds | 42.4 seconds | 55.4 seconds |
| 2025-26 | 54.5 seconds | 47.6 seconds | 42.2 seconds | 54.5 seconds |
- 2008-09: Lemaire’s last season
- 2024-25: Longest by any team
Under the coaches who followed, the Wild drifted toward the long end. They were 5th longest of 30 in 2015-16 and 3rd longest of 31 in 2020-21. Since 2021-22 they have had the league’s longest forward shifts in four of the five seasons. In 2022-23 they were second, 0.09 seconds behind the New York Rangers.
In 2024-25 Wild forwards averaged 55.35 seconds a shift, the longest by any team in a season since 1997-98. The next longest is Toronto’s 54.96 in 1998-99. Shift data is logged game by game, so a quirk in one arena could tilt a team’s total. So we split 2024-25 into home and away games, using our own game-by-game count. That count includes the forwards Minnesota traded in or out during the season, so it runs a little below the 55.35 season figure. Wild forwards averaged 53.8 seconds a shift at home and 54.9 on the road, longest in the league both ways. Ottawa was shortest both ways, at 42.5 at home and 41.3 away.
The players changed with the team. Mats Zuccarello averaged 44.3 to 47.4 seconds a shift for the Rangers from 2013-14 to 2017-18. In Minnesota he reached 63.3 in 2022-23, about 16 seconds more than his longest season in New York.
Ottawa now holds the other end. The Senators had the league’s shortest forward shifts in 2024-25 (42.4 seconds) and 2025-26 (42.2). Two of the three shortest averages by a regular forward in the latest era, since 2019-20, belong to Senators: Mark Kastelic’s 33.4 seconds in 2022-23 and Matthew Highmore’s 35.9 seconds in 2024-25.
Penalties don’t explain it: five-on-five shifts grew too
Minnesota’s long shifts, and the league’s, could be a trick of the penalty count. Power-play shifts are long and penalty-kill shifts short: in 2025-26 a forward’s shift that began on the power play averaged 61.0 seconds and one that began on the penalty kill 41.2. So a change in the number of penalties can move the league average on its own. To rule that out we kept only shifts with five skaters a side from start to finish, both goalies in their nets, in the first three periods (no overtime). Those grew too, from 44.0 seconds in 2017-18 to 45.6 in 2025-26 for forwards, and from 45.9 to 47.5 for defencemen.
Five-on-five forward shifts slid a second or two longer
Share of forward shifts played start to finish at five-on-five, grouped by length in 5-second steps (0-5 s, 5-10 s and so on), first three periods
Shift length (seconds)
Show data
| Shift length (seconds) | 2017-18 | 2025-26 |
|---|---|---|
| 2.5 | 1.1% | 0.8% |
| 7.5 | 2.3% | 1.9% |
| 12.5 | 3.0% | 2.4% |
| 17.5 | 3.9% | 3.2% |
| 22.5 | 5.0% | 4.1% |
| 27.5 | 6.3% | 5.7% |
| 32.5 | 8.0% | 7.8% |
| 37.5 | 9.9% | 10.2% |
| 42.5 | 11.7% | 12.0% |
| 47.5 | 11.7% | 12.1% |
| 52.5 | 10.5% | 10.8% |
| 57.5 | 8.3% | 8.7% |
| 62.5 | 6.1% | 6.6% |
| 67.5 | 4.2% | 4.6% |
| 72.5 | 2.8% | 3.1% |
| 77.5 | 1.8% | 2.0% |
| 82.5 | 1.2% | 1.4% |
| 87.5 | 0.8% | 0.9% |
| 92.5 | 0.5% | 0.6% |
| 97.5 | 0.3% | 0.4% |
| 102.5 | 0.2% | 0.2% |
| 107.5 | 0.1% | 0.2% |
| 112.5 | 0.1% | 0.1% |
| 117.5 | 0.1% | 0.1% |
| 122.5 | 0.0% | 0.1% |
The spread of shift lengths kept its shape and moved over by a second or two. So very short shifts got rarer: the share of five-on-five forward shifts under 20 seconds fell from 10.2% to 8.3%. Counting every shift, power plays and penalty kills included, 22% of forward shifts in 2025-26 ran past a minute, up from 20% in 2017-18. About one in 27 ran past 90 seconds, up from one in 39.
Top forwards gained the most, and Quinn Hughes, a defenceman, set the record
With penalties ruled out, the next question is who gained. Among forwards, the top of the lineup did. Split regular forwards into four equal groups by ice time per game, a rough stand-in for lines. The top group always has the longest shifts, even at five-on-five. Since 2015-16 it has gained 5.4 seconds a shift, against 2.3 for the bottom group. Today’s top forwards stay out longer than the top forwards of 1997-98 did (about 53 seconds a shift now, about 52 then). Today’s bottom forwards still change sooner than their 1997-98 counterparts (about 43 seconds now, about 44 then).
Top forwards’ shifts grew the most
Regular forwards split into quarters by ice time per game, each season
seconds
Show data
| Season | Top quarter | Second quarter | Third quarter | Bottom quarter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1997-98 | 51.6 seconds | 48.1 seconds | 45.4 seconds | 43.6 seconds |
| 1998-99 | 53.1 seconds | 48.3 seconds | 46.9 seconds | 44.3 seconds |
| 1999-00 | 52.2 seconds | 49.0 seconds | 46.5 seconds | 44.1 seconds |
| 2000-01 | 50.5 seconds | 47.3 seconds | 43.8 seconds | 42.8 seconds |
| 2001-02 | 49.5 seconds | 47.1 seconds | 44.2 seconds | 42.3 seconds |
| 2002-03 | 48.7 seconds | 44.9 seconds | 43.5 seconds | 41.0 seconds |
| 2003-04 | 46.8 seconds | 43.7 seconds | 42.8 seconds | 40.9 seconds |
| 2004-05 | – | – | – | – |
| 2005-06 | 48.2 seconds | 44.8 seconds | 42.9 seconds | 40.8 seconds |
| 2006-07 | 48.3 seconds | 44.9 seconds | 42.8 seconds | 41.2 seconds |
| 2007-08 | 49.7 seconds | 46.6 seconds | 44.5 seconds | 41.8 seconds |
| 2008-09 | 48.2 seconds | 45.9 seconds | 44.2 seconds | 41.5 seconds |
| 2009-10 | 48.5 seconds | 45.8 seconds | 44.0 seconds | 41.7 seconds |
| 2010-11 | 48.5 seconds | 45.9 seconds | 44.2 seconds | 41.9 seconds |
| 2011-12 | 48.6 seconds | 46.4 seconds | 43.6 seconds | 42.0 seconds |
| 2012-13 | 48.1 seconds | 45.8 seconds | 43.6 seconds | 41.3 seconds |
| 2013-14 | 47.9 seconds | 45.1 seconds | 43.1 seconds | 41.1 seconds |
| 2014-15 | 46.9 seconds | 44.9 seconds | 42.9 seconds | 41.6 seconds |
| 2015-16 | 47.1 seconds | 45.1 seconds | 42.6 seconds | 40.6 seconds |
| 2016-17 | 47.3 seconds | 44.6 seconds | 43.2 seconds | 41.0 seconds |
| 2017-18 | 48.7 seconds | 45.5 seconds | 43.8 seconds | 42.1 seconds |
| 2018-19 | 49.8 seconds | 46.4 seconds | 43.7 seconds | 42.5 seconds |
| 2019-20 | 50.1 seconds | 46.8 seconds | 44.5 seconds | 42.6 seconds |
| 2020-21 | 50.0 seconds | 46.7 seconds | 44.3 seconds | 42.6 seconds |
| 2021-22 | 50.5 seconds | 46.8 seconds | 44.1 seconds | 42.7 seconds |
| 2022-23 | 51.2 seconds | 47.1 seconds | 45.0 seconds | 42.4 seconds |
| 2023-24 | 51.8 seconds | 47.7 seconds | 45.5 seconds | 42.8 seconds |
| 2024-25 | 51.7 seconds | 48.2 seconds | 45.3 seconds | 43.0 seconds |
| 2025-26 | 52.5 seconds | 47.6 seconds | 46.0 seconds | 43.0 seconds |
The gap holds at five-on-five. In shifts played start to finish at five-on-five, the top quarter went from 46.1 seconds in 2017-18 to 48.5 in 2025-26, and the bottom quarter from 42.2 to 42.9. That matches what we found in the fourth-line story, seen from the top of the lineup. Since 1997-98 the bottom quarter gained ice time mostly by going out more often (about 13 shifts a game then, about 16 now). The top quarter’s big change came after the league-wide low of 2015-16, so for them we start there. Since then the top forwards have played slightly more minutes (18.9 a game then, 19.5 now) in fewer, longer shifts: about 24 trips over the boards a game then, about 22 now.
Now look at the very top, and count defencemen too. Defencemen usually stay out a little longer than forwards (49.3 seconds a shift in 2025-26, against 47.6). In 2025-26, nine regulars averaged a minute or more a shift. Four of the nine played for Minnesota: Hughes, Kirill Kaprizov (63.7), Mats Zuccarello (60.9) and Matt Boldy (60.3). Kaprizov’s was the longest by any forward. The other forwards were Connor McDavid (61.4) and Macklin Celebrini (60.2), and the other defencemen Jakob Chychrun, Zach Werenski and Miro Heiskanen.
Hughes did not start out at the top. In 2019-20, his first season as a regular, he averaged 54.9 seconds a shift. Then came 58.8, 54.5, 55.5, 58.5 and 61.0, the last of those in 2024-25. The trade did not shorten his shifts. By our own shift-by-shift count he averaged about 69 seconds in 26 games for Vancouver and about 70 in 48 for Minnesota. Over all 74 games the NHL’s totals give him 69.5 seconds.
That is the longest average by any regular, forward or defenceman, since 1997-98. He broke a mark that had stood since 1999-00, when Scott Niedermayer of the New Jersey Devils averaged 67.3 seconds. His Devils teammate Scott Stevens averaged 63.6 that season.
| Era | Forward | Seconds | Defenceman | Seconds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1997-98 to 2003-04 | Jaromir Jagr (PIT, 1999-00) | 63.3 | Scott Niedermayer (NJD, 1999-00) | 67.3 |
Continues below
| Era | Forward | Seconds | Defenceman | Seconds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005-06 to 2011-12 | Ilya Kovalchuk (ATL, 2008-09) | 66.4 | Sergei Zubov (DAL, 2007-08) | 62.6 |
| 2012-13 to 2018-19 | Alex Ovechkin (WSH, 2018-19) | 60.5 | Erik Karlsson (OTT, 2015-16) | 64.2 |
| 2019-20 to 2025-26 | Kirill Kaprizov (MIN, 2024-25) | 65.3 | Quinn Hughes (VAN/MIN, 2025-26) | 69.5 |
Second periods and trailing teams run longer
Inside a single game, the same player’s shift stretches or shrinks with the moment. In the second period each team defends the end farther from its own bench. A winger who gets caught in his own zone then has a long skate to his own bench before he can change, so he stays out. Coaches call it the long change. In 2025-26 forwards’ five-on-five shifts averaged 45.4 seconds in the first period, 49.0 in the second and 46.4 in the third. Defencemen ran 46.5, 51.6 and 48.2. The second period had the longest shifts for both positions in every season since 2017-18.
Shifts ran longest in the second period, when the bench is farthest away
Average seconds, shifts that began at five-on-five, 2025-26
In 2025-26 five-on-five shifts were longest in the second period: 49.0 seconds for forwards and 51.6 for defencemen.
- Forwards
- Defencemen
Score matters mostly late. In third periods from 2017-18 to 2025-26, a forward’s five-on-five shift that began with his team down a goal averaged 48.2 seconds, against 44.1 when tied and 44.6 when up a goal. That order held in all nine seasons. Part of it is the goalie pull: a shift that starts at five-on-five can run on after the trailing team pulls its goalie for an extra skater. We checked the two latest seasons, 2024-25 and 2025-26. In both, leaving out shifts that included a pulled goalie cuts the trailing team’s extra seconds roughly in half, but they do not disappear. In the first two periods, trailing by a goal adds under a second over a tie (0.6 in the first, 0.1 in the second). For the rest the data cannot say why; trailing coaches leaning on their top players is one plausible reading.
Fewer whistles can’t explain the change on their own
The first suspect for the longer shifts is fewer whistles. Every stoppage restarts with a faceoff, and stoppages are the easy time to change, so fewer whistles could mean longer shifts. Faceoffs did fall: about 61 a game in 2017-18, about 56 in 2025-26. But across all 28 seasons, knowing how many faceoffs a season had tells you almost nothing about how long its shifts ran. Measured as a correlation, where 1 means the two move in lockstep and 0 means no connection, the link is 0.09. From 1997-98 to 2003-04, for example, shifts got about 4 seconds shorter while faceoffs held near 65 a game.
Seasons with about 65 faceoffs a game had both the shortest and the longest shifts, so whistles alone can’t set the length
One dot per regular season, 1997-98 to 2025-26
Average forward shift
Faceoffs a game
Show data
| Faceoffs a game | Average forward shift | |
|---|---|---|
| 1997-98 | 66 | 47.7 s |
| 1998-99 | 66 | 48.7 s |
| 1999-00 | 66 | 48.4 s |
| 2000-01 | 66 | 46.6 s |
| 2001-02 | 66 | 46.3 s |
| 2002-03 | 65 | 45.0 s |
| 2003-04 | 65 | 43.9 s |
| 2005-06 | 61 | 44.7 s |
| 2006-07 | 58 | 44.7 s |
| 2007-08 | 56 | 46.2 s |
| 2008-09 | 57 | 45.4 s |
| 2009-10 | 57 | 45.5 s |
| 2010-11 | 58 | 45.4 s |
| 2011-12 | 58 | 45.5 s |
| 2012-13 | 60 | 45.1 s |
| 2013-14 | 60 | 44.6 s |
| 2014-15 | 61 | 44.3 s |
| 2015-16 | 60 | 44.2 s |
| 2016-17 | 60 | 44.4 s |
| 2017-18 | 61 | 45.3 s |
| 2018-19 | 59 | 46.0 s |
| 2019-20 | 57 | 46.2 s |
| 2020-21 | 56 | 46.2 s |
| 2021-22 | 57 | 46.3 s |
| 2022-23 | 57 | 46.9 s |
| 2023-24 | 57 | 47.3 s |
| 2024-25 | 57 | 47.4 s |
| 2025-26 | 56 | 47.6 s |
Year to year, the whistle idea gets a little support. In 19 of the 27 changes from one season to the next, faceoffs and shift length moved opposite ways: fewer draws and longer shifts, or more draws and shorter ones. That leans the right way, but weakly: the correlation between those yearly changes is -0.36, where −1 would mean every drop in faceoffs came with a matching rise in shift length.
Since the lockout the two have moved together much more closely, with a correlation of -0.80 over 21 seasons. Faceoffs slid from about 60 a game in 2015-16 to about 56 in 2025-26 while shifts grew. Don’t read too much into that. Both numbers moved slowly, in runs of several seasons at a time, and the year-to-year link stayed modest. Two slow-moving numbers can line up on a chart, the way a growing kid’s height and shoe size climb together without one causing the other.
Mostly, the same players stretched their own shifts
If whistles don’t settle it, the next question is who did the stretching. A league average can rise two ways. The players already in the league can stay out longer, or new players with longer habits can take their jobs. Hughes shows the first way. He added about 15 seconds a shift over his own career, from 54.9 in his first full season to 69.5.
To measure it league-wide, we followed every regular forward who played back-to-back seasons, 3,243 pairs of seasons from 2015-16 to 2025-26, and added up how much each man’s own shifts changed from one year to the next. Those changes come to about 2.3 seconds of the league’s 3.4-second rise, roughly two thirds. New players replacing old ones account for the rest. The split is rough, because it follows only players who stayed regulars.
The shrinking years worked the same way in reverse. From 1997-98 to 2003-04 the same players cut their own shifts by about 3 seconds, most of the league’s 4-second drop.
Rule changes may have played a part. In 2002-03 the NHL brought in hurry-up line changes, which limit how long teams may take to change at a stoppage. In 2005-06 it barred a team that ices the puck from changing, so a tired line that fires the puck the length of the ice has to stay out for the faceoff. The data can’t separate those rules from coaching.
One season in the old tables looks odd. In 2007-08 the same forwards’ shifts jumped 1.4 seconds, then fell back 0.7 the next year. That could be a change in how shifts were recorded. We have not checked it against the game-by-game shift reports.
Teams have won with long shifts and with short ones
Whatever sets the length of a shift, the last question is whether it changes who wins. If long shifts won games, the long-shift teams would finish higher in the standings. They don’t. We compared each team’s forward shift length with its record in the same season, for every team in every season since 1997-98, 845 in all. Each team was measured against that season’s league average. A team whose forwards stayed out a second longer than the league finished with next to no extra points: less than a tenth of a point over a full season on average, and allowing for the luck in any set of seasons, the real figure is very likely within about half a point either way.
That is about what luck alone would produce. Shift length shows no sign of moving a team up or down the standings. Season by season it came out both ways: in 15 of 28 seasons the longer-shift teams did slightly better, and in the rest slightly worse. In the first 14 seasons the short-shift teams did a shade better; in the last 14, the long-shift teams did, each time by a hair.
To see what luck alone looks like, we ran a test. We kept every team’s shift length where it was and handed each season’s standings points back out to its teams at random. That scrambles away any real connection, so whatever link survives is pure chance. We did it 4,000 times. The real link between shift length and points landed right in the middle of those chance results.
Stanley Cup winners have come from both ends. Dallas in 1998-99 and Colorado in 2000-01 won with the league’s shortest forward shifts. Washington in 2017-18 won with the longest. Of the 28 champions since 1997-98, 21 ranked between sixth shortest and sixth longest.
| Season | Champion | Forward shift (s) | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1997-98 | Detroit | 48.52 | 16 of 26 |
| 1998-99 | Dallas | 43.81 | 1 of 27 |
| 1999-00 | New Jersey | 52.29 | 26 of 28 |
| 2000-01 | Colorado | 39.36 | 1 of 30 |
| 2001-02 | Detroit | 49.55 | 25 of 30 |
| 2002-03 | New Jersey | 44.10 | 10 of 30 |
| 2003-04 | Tampa Bay | 43.63 | 15 of 30 |
| 2005-06 | Carolina | 45.72 | 21 of 30 |
| 2006-07 | Anaheim | 44.37 | 12 of 30 |
| 2007-08 | Detroit | 44.42 | 5 of 30 |
| 2008-09 | Pittsburgh | 48.75 | 26 of 30 |
| 2009-10 | Chicago | 44.73 | 15 of 30 |
| 2010-11 | Boston | 48.36 | 28 of 30 |
| 2011-12 | Los Angeles | 45.43 | 13 of 30 |
| 2012-13 | Chicago | 45.53 | 18 of 30 |
| 2013-14 | Los Angeles | 44.60 | 15 of 30 |
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| Season | Champion | Forward shift (s) | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | Chicago | 45.47 | 21 of 30 |
| 2015-16 | Pittsburgh | 43.22 | 8 of 30 |
| 2016-17 | Pittsburgh | 43.93 | 9 of 30 |
| 2017-18 | Washington | 49.61 | 31 of 31 |
| 2018-19 | St. Louis | 46.24 | 19 of 31 |
| 2019-20 | Tampa Bay | 46.46 | 14 of 31 |
| 2020-21 | Tampa Bay | 47.37 | 23 of 31 |
| 2021-22 | Colorado | 47.48 | 24 of 32 |
| 2022-23 | Vegas | 48.01 | 21 of 32 |
| 2023-24 | Florida | 45.88 | 9 of 32 |
| 2024-25 | Florida | 45.55 | 6 of 32 |
| 2025-26 | Carolina | 47.94 | 15 of 32 |
Lemaire’s camp drill, 25 seasons later
At that first camp, Lemaire’s whistle kept the Wild on the ice for one or two minutes at a time, and Pellerin wrote that they didn’t have much left in their tanks. That season Lemaire’s forwards averaged 39.4 seconds a shift in games.
Twenty-five seasons later, Hughes played 48 games for the same franchise. He stayed on the ice for two minutes or longer 100 times, about twice a game.
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- Tests written down
- Not in advance (exploratory)
- Results computed
League shift length is total skater ice time divided by total shifts from the NHL’s time-on-ice tables, every regular season 1997-98 to 2025-26. The detail rebuilds every skater shift from our on-ice data for 2017-18 to 2025-26 (8,317,634 shifts in 11,052 games): a shift is an unbroken run on the ice within one period. Team figures (added 2026-10-27) divide each team’s single-team forwards’ ice time by their shifts and rank the teams within each season; the Cup winner is the team with four wins in the final round of the NHL’s playoff game list. For team shift length against points %, each team is measured against its season’s average and the 845 team-seasons are pooled; the 90% range comes from resampling whole seasons, and the luck benchmark from shuffling points among each season’s teams (4,000 draws each). A correlation (r) measures how closely two things move together: 1 means in lockstep, 0 means no connection. Shuffling the points among each season’s teams at random, while the shift lengths stay put, breaks any real connection, so the shuffled correlations show what chance alone produces; the real 0.01 sits in the middle of them. The slope says a team whose forwards stayed out a second longer than the league finished with 0.04 more points over 82 games, on average, with a 90% range from 0.4 points fewer to 0.5 more.
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Points percentage is the share of available standings points a team earned. Home and away (2024-25) come from our shift-by-shift rebuild, which counts every forward who played for a team, including players traded during the season; the season figures leave traded players out, so the two differ slightly. The within-player split follows each regular forward seen in back-to-back seasons, takes the mean change in his own shift length for each pair of seasons, and sums those yearly means from 2015-16 to 2025-26 (and from 1997-98 to 2003-04 for the shrinking years); players who drop out or arrive are not followed, so the remainder is credited to turnover. Faceoff figures as correlations (r, where 1 is lockstep and 0 is no connection): 0.09 between faceoffs a game and forward shift length across all 28 seasons, -0.36 between their season-to-season changes, and -0.80 over the 21 seasons since the lockout. Limits: the early NHL tables cannot be checked shift by shift, which is why the 2007-08 jump stays unexplained. For 2025-26 the raw shift rows (923,241 skater shifts in 1,247 games, 2 back-to-back) give 47.6 seconds for forwards, the same as the NHL. Short seasons (2012-13, 2019-20, 2020-21) are per-shift averages, so they still compare. Team figures count only players who spent the whole season with one team, because the NHL combines a traded player’s teams into one line.
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Minnesota’s and Ottawa’s extremes hold in home and away games alike, but we checked that split only for 2024-25. Coaching stints are lined up by season, and the data cannot say that a coach caused a team’s rank. The team comparison with points covers whole seasons; it cannot say whether any single long shift costs a team. A shift runs from the moment a player steps on until he steps off, so a long one can span whistles he stayed on through. The goalie-pull check (dropping third-period shifts that included a pulled goalie) was run for 2024-25 and 2025-26 only.
| Test | Result | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Our rebuilt shifts match the NHL’s shift counts | Within 0.11 s a shift, every season and position; 2025-26 raw rows 47.62 s vs NHL 47.61 s | Holds |
| Shifts shortened from the late 1990s | Forwards 48.7 s (1998-99) to 43.9 s (2003-04) | Holds |
More tests below
| Test | Result | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Shifts have lengthened since the mid-2010s | Forwards 44.2 s (2015-16) to 47.6 s (2025-26) | Holds |
| The rise holds at five-on-five only | Whole 5v5 forward shifts 44.0 to 45.6 s, 2017-18 to 2025-26 | Holds |
| The same players lengthened their shifts | +2.3 s summed over back-to-back seasons since 2015-16 (3,243 player pairs), 66% of the league’s 3.4 s rise; −3.4 s from 1997-98 to 2003-04 | Holds (about two thirds of the rise) |
| Top forwards gained the most | Every quarter rose; top quarter +5.4 s, bottom quarter +2.3 s; top quarter 52.5 s in 2025-26 vs 51.6 s in 1997-98, bottom quarter 43.0 s vs 43.5 s; bottom-quarter shifts a game 12.9 (1997-98) and 15.7 (2025-26); top quarter 24.1 (2015-16) and 22.3 (2025-26) | Holds |
Continues below
| Test | Result | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Short- and long-shift regulars both gained | Regular forwards, 10th percentile 39.6 s (2015-16) to 42.2 s (2025-26); 90th percentile 48.8 s to 53.2 s | Holds |
| Longer shifts, fewer of them | Forwards 14.91 min a game in 20.24 shifts (2015-16); 15.14 min in 19.08 shifts (2025-26) | Holds |
| More forward shifts run past a minute and past 90 seconds | All states: over 60 s 19.8% (2017-18) to 22.2% (2025-26); over 90 s 2.58% to 3.68% | Holds |
| Hughes’s shifts did not shorten after the trade | Rebuilt shifts: 26 games for Vancouver 68.57 s, 48 for Minnesota 70.07 s; NHL season figure 69.5 s over 74 games | Holds |
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| Test | Result | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Fewer faceoffs explain longer shifts | r = 0.09 (levels), -0.36 (yearly changes), 28 seasons; since the lockout r = -0.80 over 21 seasons (both trending); faceoffs 60.8 a game (2017-18) to 56.0 (2025-26); 1997-98 to 2003-04 shifts fell 3.9 s with faceoffs near 65 | Weak |
| Lemaire’s Wild had the shortest or second-shortest forward shifts every season (2000-01 to 2008-09) | Second (behind Colorado) 4 times, shortest 4 times; 10th of 30 in 2009-10 | Holds |
| Minnesota has had the longest forward shifts since 2021-22 | Longest in 4 of 5 seasons; second in 2022-23 (52.96 s vs NYR 53.05 s) | Mostly holds |
| Minnesota’s 2024-25 lead is not one arena’s scoring | Longest at home (53.80 s) and away (54.89 s); Ottawa shortest at both | Holds (2024-25 only) |
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| Test | Result | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Teams with longer forward shifts earn more points | r = 0.01 (90% range −0.06 to +0.07), 845 team-seasons; shuffled-points range −0.06 to +0.06; +0.04 points per 82 games per extra second (−0.4 to +0.5); mean within-season r 0.01 (−0.06 to +0.07), positive in 15 of 28; mean within-season r -0.06 in the first 14 seasons and 0.08 in the last 14, small in both | No link found |
Frequently asked questions
How long is the average NHL shift?
In 2025-26 NHL forwards averaged 47.6 seconds a shift and defencemen 49.3, from the NHL’s season ice-time and shift totals. The middle forward shift (half were shorter, half longer) was about 46 seconds.
Are NHL shifts getting shorter?
They did until the mid-2010s: forwards fell from 48.7 seconds in 1998-99 to 43.9 in 2003-04 and were still 44.2 in 2015-16. Since then they have grown to 47.6, the longest since 1999-00.
Who has the longest shifts in the NHL?
The longest average by a regular since 1997-98 is Quinn Hughes’s 69.5 seconds in 2025-26. Among forwards since 2019-20, Kirill Kaprizov averaged 65.3 seconds in 2024-25.
Which NHL team has the longest shifts?
The Minnesota Wild. Their forwards had the league’s longest average shift in 2021-22, 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26, and the second longest in 2022-23. Their 55.35 seconds in 2024-25 is the longest by any team in a season since 1997-98. Ottawa had the shortest in 2024-25 and 2025-26.
Why are second-period shifts longer?
In the second period each team defends the end farther from its bench (the long change), so changing takes longer. In 2025-26 forwards’ five-on-five shifts averaged 49.0 seconds in the second period against 45.4 in the first.
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Sources and method
- NHL stats (NHL.com), every season since 1917-18
- CBC Sports: NHL approves safety nets, hurry-up face-offs (2002)
- NHL stats API: skater time on ice and shifts, 1997-98 on
- NHL stats API: team faceoffs by season
- NHL stats API: shift charts (the source of our shift rebuild)
- Scouting the Refs: NHL historical rule changes
- NHL.com (Seattle Kraken): Analytics with Alison, controlling second periods (the long change)
- ESPN.com, Scott Pellerin: Long shifts make for tough day (Wild training camp diary, 2000; Internet Archive copy)
- The Canadian Press, via The Hockey News: Jacques Lemaire says Minnesota Wild will be better off without him (April 2009)
- Associated Press, via Fox Sports: Quinn Hughes scores in Minnesota debut as Wild beat Bruins 6-2 (Dec. 14, 2025)
- The Hockey Writers: Wild’s Hughes scores in debut, 6-2 win over Bruins (Dec. 14, 2025)
- KSTP: Wild acquire star defenseman Quinn Hughes in blockbuster trade with Vancouver
Research and analysis, not betting advice. Past results do not guarantee future returns; bet only what you can afford to lose.