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The average player in hockey's top league in 2005-06 is 6-foot-1 and 204.9 pounds, a full two inches taller and 20.5 pounds heavier than the average skater 33 years ago


Shave 1/10th of a pound off his physique and a sliver more than a year from his birth certificate and Canadiens defenceman/forward Mathieu Dandenault is a perfectly average National Hockey League player.

This is not to diminish the considerable skills of the 29-year-old Sherbrooke native. It's merely to state that the 6-foot-1, 205-pounder is within fractions of the average height, weight and age of this season's NHL player - 6-foot-1, 204.9 pounds and 28.4 years.

The elite professional is of unprecedented size in 2005-06, based on the 710 active players and injured reserve on first-game rosters of the NHL's 30 clubs.

This average player has grown two inches, added 20.4 pounds and aged two years since 1972-73, the first year the league tracked him, when he was 5-foot-11, 184.5 pounds and 26.4 years.

He is 3/10ths of a pound heavier and one-half year older than in 2003-04, and is 6-foot-1 for the 11th consecutive season.

The Canadiens' 23-man opening-night roster averaged 6-foot-1 and 204 pounds, ranking the team 18th overall on the scale. That's a sack of potatoes lighter than the sad-sack Washington Capitals, who at 211.2 pounds at least lead the NHL in something.

Montreal is the league's seventh-youngest team at an average 27.5 years of age. They trail the No. 1 San Jose Sharks, at 26.6, and are three years the junior of the fossilized New Jersey Devils, oldest at an average 30.6.

And no longer are the Canadiens the Flying Frenchmen of yore. Their roster is as much a melting pot as the city they call home, featuring nine native Canadians (six from Quebec), three Americans (all from New York State), three from the Czech Republic, two Russians and one each from Sweden, Finland, Slovakia, Latvia, Kazakhstan and Switzerland.

Canadian-born players still dominate the NHL, 371 of 710 athletes - 52.3 per cent - representing the Northwest Territories and every province but New Brunswick. Fifty-five Quebecers skate for 23 clubs, third-most by province. Ontario has 146 players on all 30 teams, while Alberta has 67 on 27 clubs.

Spend any time around the Canadiens and it becomes clear the size equation is not all about the broad armour worn beneath uniforms. Even in his longjohns, today's sculpted player might be a tailor's worst nightmare.

Forward Raitis Ivanans is the largest Canadien not just this season, but since the birth of the franchise in 1909. The bodybuilder/human forklift drapes 263 pounds on his 6-foot-4 frame.

Last summer, Ivanans set his lifetime best on the bench press in an Illinois gym.

"It was a good day," the Latvian said. "Eight plates."

Which would be 405 pounds, or almost 21/2 Mike Ribeiros, the sinewy centre who's the lightest Canadien at 175 pounds - nearly 30 pounds below league average.

Scott Livingston, the Canadiens strength and conditioning co-ordinator, says that Ivanans is the mightiest man on the team, though former Russian winger Oleg Petrov, all 5-foot-9, 170 pounds of him, might have been the strongest he's seen pound-for-pound.

Montreal's tallest and least tall - do not ever call an NHL player short - are 6-foot-5 forward Pierre Dagenais and 5-foot-8 defenceman Francis Bouillon.

The leanest are forwards Chris Higgins and Steve Begin, whose 7.5 per-cent body fat is well less than half a healthy adult male's 18-per-cent norm.

"Athletes have gotten bigger, stronger, quicker and more powerful the last 10 years," said Livingston, in his seventh NHL season, four with the Canadiens following three with the New York Rangers and Islanders.

He chuckled this week as he scouted Ivanans lifting weights in the Bell Centre gym, referring to him as "a house."

But Livingston has not just idly watched players grow. He's helped them get and stay that way with specifically designed programs to develop flexibility, strength, endurance and explosive power.

And no longer are players skated into the ice; Canadiens head coach Claude Julien builds strategic rest periods into practice schedules.

"Guys used to come to training camp to get in shape," Livingston said. "Now, it's how much are they going to deteriorate during the season, and what can we do to keep them strong. The bigger problem is not beating them up too much.

"There's a lot more proactive work done to prevent injury, and make sure these big, strong bodies don't tear themselves apart."

Improved training, nutrition, rehabilitation and a generally larger population has changed the face of the game over the years. Some of Montreal's hockey icons would indeed have to throw the proverbial torch to today's Canadiens, simply because they'd have otherwise needed a ladder to hand it over.

The sensational 1930s line of Joliat, Howie Morenz and Johnny (Black Cat) Gagnon averaged 5-foot-7 and 147 pounds. Joliat, called the Mighty Atom and the Little Giant, weighed just 134 pounds.

A decade later, Elmer Lach centred Maurice Richard and Toe Blake on the Punch Line, the era's most fearsome trio. They averaged 166 pounds.

Yvan Cournoyer, 5-foot-7 and 178 pounds, and Dickie Moore, 5-foot-10, 168 pounds, intimidated with skill, not size.

And then there was goaler Roy (Shrimp) Worters, who played one game for the Canadiens in 1930, loaned to Montreal by the New York Americans to fill in for the injured George Hainsworth. Worters was 5-foot-3 on skates and maybe 130 pounds, his head tucked beneath the crossbar when he crouched.

A full foot taller and at 205 pounds, Canadiens centreman Jean Beliveau was arguably hockey's most imposing figure through the 1950s and '60s, a figure who wore his weight like a finely cut suit.

Today, Beliveau would be just one more large player in the NHL, if a massively talented one who could stickhandle through entire modern teams with one hand on his Victoriaville Pro.

"I've often said I'd be just average today," he has suggested, to the belief of no one.

Beliveau recalls only a handful of 6-foot-plus opponents in his day, including Allan Stanley, Eddie Litzenberger and Elmer (Moose) Vasko.

"Moose was a lot heavier than me," he remembered.

Maybe Vasko just seemed that way in the corners, because the NHL catalogues the 6-foot-2 Chicago defenceman as five pounds lighter than Beliveau.

"Go back a generation or two and you'll find a 16-year-old was a lot smaller than he is today," Beliveau said. "The entire population is larger. I used to go to midget-age games, and there were 6-footers more than not.

"Another difference now is these big guys are pretty good skaters. A lot of the guys over 6 feet in my time were very slow."

In today's vastly different NHL, a slow 6-footer is probably not even riding the buses in the minor leagues.

He's driving the bus.

dstubbs@thegazette.canwest.com


Bulging-biceped Raitis Ivanans is the biggest Canadiens player at 6-foot-4 and 263 pounds. Scott Livingston, the team's strength and conditioning coordinator, calls the forward "a house."