Career duration in the NHL: pushing and pulling on Europeans?

ABSTRACT

Using a panel of National Hockey League players from 2000 through 2013, we analyse the determinants of career length in the league. In our analysis, we include both performance variables and nationality of origin to determine their importance in determining career length. We find that European-born players have shorter careers than North American-born players holding performance constant and Russian-born players have even shorter careers than other Europeans. We further find that Russian-born players have even shorter careers than other players after the 2005 lockout. These shorter careers are consistent with both exit discrimination against European and Russian players who are pushed out of the league as well as voluntary exit by European and Russian players who are pulled out of the league due to opportunities in their home countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Exit discrimination
• competing leagues
• professional sports
• return migration

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• L83
• F22
• J61

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ From the 2000–2013 period, players also hailed from Indonesia (1), Japan (2), Kazakhstan (7), Nigeria (1) and Tanzania (1). These players are not included in the empirical analysis below.

² Although no US league explicitly limits the number of foreign-born players, teams might still discriminate against foreign players due to fan, player or management preferences.

³ When higher-order polynomials of the sixth and seventh power are included, the results do not change, suggesting that a fifth-order polynomial is flexible enough to capture the influence of the baseline hazard.

⁴ The ‘plus-minus’ statistic is calculated as a points differential. When an even-strength or shorthanded goal is scored, every player on the ice for the scoring team is credited with a ‘plus’. Every player on the ice for the team scored against gets a ‘minus’. A player’s overall plus minus is calculated by subtracting the minuses from the pluses. A high plus minus is taken to mean the player is a good offensive or defensive player.