The role of relative age, playing position, and height and weight in Canadian Hockey League draft selection
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Relative age effects describe the over-representation of those born earlier in their youth-sport selection year (i.e., the relatively older) on elite sports teams. However, in the long-term relatively younger players may be more sought after (Baker & Logan, 2007). This study extends prior research by exploring talent identification processes prior to professional sport. The Ontario, Western and Quebec Major Junior Hockey Leagues (i.e., OHL, WHL and QMJHL) are developmental leagues for professional hockey, drafting eligible players who are 15 years of age. Canadian players’ relative age, playing position, weight, height, and draft round were collected for each entry draft within the leagues (OHL: 1999-2012, N = 3537; WHL: 2011-2012, N = 415; QMJHL: 2003-2012, N = 2275). The overall sample of each league reflected significant relative age effects [OHL: χ2 = 873.7, p < 001, w = .49; WHL: χ2 = 126.3, p < 001, w = .55; QMJHL: χ2 = 186.8, p < 001, w = .28). There were also small, positive correlations between relative age and draft round found in each league (r < .12). With the exception of the QMJHL, athletes’ weight (r = -.09 to - .20, p < .05) and height (r = - .11 to - .17, p < .01) were also associated with earlier draft round selection. Further, centres were drafted earlier than other positions. These results showed a small advantage for relatively older youth in the CHL drafts, although height, weight and position were stronger predictors of draft round.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".