Catching Dale Hunter

Totally random, but I spent all day buying Math related books as part of my day job, so I have Math on the mind.

Jasper's Rink had a feature about Dale Hunter, the only player to have 1,000 points and 3,000 PIM in his NHL career. He may very well be the only one to reach such milestones ever. J.P. did some number crunching, and determined how many seasons other players would need to play (assuming points and PIMs per game remains constant) to catch up.

So, I did that for Mathieu. How long would Mathieu need to play in order to reach the Dale Hunter club? Almost 23 more seasons! At career pace, he would reach 1,000 points in 500 more games (or about 6 seasons). For penalty minutes, though, he'd need 1,856 games (or about 22.6 seasons) to reach 3,000. I'm not sure Mathieu plans to play until he's 62, so it is safe to say he'll never reach the Dale Hunter club.


Side note: Even more impressive, it would take Brad Richards 46 more seasons to reach 3,000 PIMs. He could reach 1,000 points in 6 more years, but with only 137 PIMS in his first 602 NHL games, the former Lady Byng winner has his work cut out for him to catch up to Dale... unless he wants to play until he's 74 years old. And come on, Brad. Four PIMS this season, and your whole 36 game PIM-less streak prior to those four just isn't going to help =)