It’s no secret that Nashville Predators captain Roman Josi logs a tremendous amount of ice time. He seems to be out there every other shift and in all important situations during a game.
The NHL has long kept time on ice as a statistic. This season, Josi is averaging about 25 minutes per game, nearly 4 minutes more per game than Brady Skjei, the next-highest Predator.
In recent years, the NHL has stepped up its tracking of all that occurs on the ice during a game. Players have trackers inside their jerseys, and the pucks contain chips that collect volumes of data that wasn’t previously available. The NHL compiles the data on a site called NHL Edge.
Songwriters are famous for saying how far they’d walk for someone. Vanessa Carlton would walk 1,000 miles, Scottish twin brothers, The Proclaimers, would go half that distance. But how far do NHL players skate for their team in a game? We now know that answer.
In a mid-January game against the Chicago Blackhawks, Josi was tracked at skating 4.79 miles. That distance is the most by any player in the league this season, edging Columbus Blue Jackets defenseman Zach Werenski, who has the second-highest total at 4.75 miles.
The eye test tells fans that Josi is all over the ice in pretty much every game he plays, but the NHL Edge statistics track not only the distance skated, but also where players are on the ice when they do so. In his season-high performance, Josi tracked 1.24 miles in the offensive zone, 1.49 in the neutral zone and 2.06 in the defensive zone.
At 34, Josi is still covering a lot of real estate each game.
Not to be outdone, Predators center Steven Stamkos is making the over-30 crowd look good, as well. Stamkos, also 34, recorded the fourth-fastest skating speed burst during a game this season when he reached 24.21 miles per hour in a game at altitude in Colorado. Martin Necas, then of the Carolina Hurricanes, has the honor of being the fastest skater so far this season at 24.49 mph.