A look at the roster breakdown

Published 12:27 pm Sunday, September 11, 2011

Once again I turn to Alan Caldwell and the tremendous work he does on his blog. Recently he did his annual preseaon roster breakdown, where he calculates the average height, weight and age of the players on each team in the WHL. It’s clearly a lot of work, and it’s always interesting to see where the Tips stand in relation to the rest of the league.

Since Alan started doing this a few seasons back, Everett has always tended to be one of the smaller teams and one of the older teams. Well, this year is different.

The Tips, based on the players on every team’s roster going into the weekend, had the second-youngest team in the league at an average age of 17.73 years. Now, that number and that ranking are going to change. Everett already is down to its three overagers, while some teams have as many as six overagers on the roster to skew their average age higher. And at the other end, the Tips were still carrying six 16-year-olds this weekend, and I’d be surprised if they end up keeping more than three. Still, it’s numerical confirmation that the Tips are indeed young and rebuilding this season.

On the size side, Everett ranks third in average height at 72.87 inches and tied for seventh in average weight at 187.67 pounds. That’s interesting, because when looking at the preseason roster it was clear Everett was bigger than it had been in recent years, but my reaction wasn’t to think Everett had a particularly big team. It’s also interesting that the Tips’ size has increased despite the team being so much younger.

By the way, Seattle dwarfs every other team in the league, averaging more than a full inch taller and nine pounds heavier than the next-biggest squads. I couldn’t tell you what that means for 2011-12, but I thought it was interesting.