Who are the most effective physical players in the NHL?

Nov 26, 2025, 14:00 ESTUpdated: Nov 26, 2025, 08:39 EST

Who are the most effective physical players in the NHL?

Credit: Jeff Curry-Imagn Images

Physicality is always a hot topic in hockey. If you ask one person, it’s an essential part of a successful team, as it wears down the opponent and creates more space for the talented players to thrive, especially in the playoffs as referees are less likely to call penalties. If you ask another person, it causes more harm than good to a team, especially considering it often requires your team to not have the puck to truly implement it.

The truth is there’s a balance with both stances. If you look at the recent Stanley Cup-winning teams, physicality was an element of their play, but they also had bigger strengths that were their key elements. The Florida Panthers have had immense forward depth and elite defensive players the past two seasons. The Vegas Golden Knights also had a deep forward lineup in 2023. The Tampa Bay Lightning were another team who were deep up front for their Cup wins and had one of the best goaltenders in the league in Andrei Vasilevskiy.

However, some teams learn the wrong lesson and make physicality their defining element. Not only does that shift their priorities in the wrong direction and weaken their identity, but often times, they look for the wrong players. Many teams have slowly closed their contention windows chasing this balance and just bringing in players solely for their size and not for the rest of their skills.

Sam Bennett, Tom Wilson and the Tkachuk brothers are current examples of the type of player teams dream of having in this mold, but they aren’t effective players solely for their physicality. Wilson and the Tkachuks are high-end producers in the league, and while Bennett has flashes of good production, he’s also an effective shutdown player. Their size, physicality and tenacity are notable elements of their games, but they’re great examples because those traits are not the only elements of their games.

So who are the most effective physical players in the league? Which players use their size and pugnaciousness to not only give their opponents fits, but also tilt the game in their favor and possibly even generate offense and drive play themselves? I decided to look into the numbers to see which players do just that by taking every NHL player since 2022-23 and identifying who has a consistent physical presence (with the only notable stat out there, hits) while also being players that are good at other areas of the ice.

However, there is one aspect of this experiment that will be counter-intuitive: I will only be looking at regular-season data. While the importance of physicality is amplified in the postseason, I wanted to use an equal sample size for every player in this evaluation process, and you can only get that in the regular season. This also means we’ll only be looking at even strength numbers.

To start, let’s look at pure offensive production. While pure power forwards are few and far between in the modern NHL, there’s still some who can crash and bang while also putting the puck in the net or distributing it to their linemates. To do so, I’ll compare each player’s hits per 60 minutes to their goals and primary points per 60 minutes.

Kiefer Sherwood is the most notable standout in this department, particularly with his goal-scoring. While that is helped by his performance this season (12 goals in 23 games, 1.46 5v5 G/60), he has also chipped in offensively in the past, with seasons of 0.95, 0.78 and 0.95 5v5 G/60 in his previous three seasons. That’s also helped out his primary point production rates, so he is also a standout there.

Tkachuk shouldn’t be a surprise either, as he’s very clearly made a name for himself for his ability to both produce and be a headache for other teams, and he often lives in front of the net. Michael Pezzetta may be a bit more of a surprise considering he has just 27 points in his last 149 games, including none in 25 games last season, but he also doesn’t get a lot of ice time. That said, he is on the lower end of the offensive spectrum, so I wouldn’t expect him to solve all of the Toronto Maple Leafs‘ problems right now.

But raw production totals can still experience some shooting percentage inflation. While three seasons and change is a strong sample size, it’s important to look under the hood and see who’s actually driving the offense as opposed to riding shotgun with talented players. Let’s compare their hits per 60 to their individual expected goals for and on-ice expected goals for per 60.

Once again, Tkachuk makes an appearance, as he is quite prominent in both stats. This isn’t a surprise: in fact, the running joke for Brady in the early stages of his career was how he consistently underperformed his expected goals and struggled to finish, never scoring more than 22 goals in his first three seasons. In his last four, he’s never scored fewer than 29, so he’s certainly improved on that, but it hasn’t come at the expense of his ability to drive offense, both individually (1.24 5v5 ixGF/60) and for his teammates (3.39 5v5 xGF/60).

Another prominent player in both individual and on-ice expected goals is William Carrier. That shouldn’t come as a surprise either, as he’s been a key forechecker for both the Golden Knights and the Carolina Hurricanes. With a 1.07 5v5 ixGF/60 and a 3.17 5v5 xGF/60, he certainly does that job well, and it’s easy to see why the Canes prioritized locking him up long-term.

The outliers change depending on the stat. Jonah Gadjovich (0.87 5v5 ixGF/60) and Evander Kane (1.18) are great at creating chances for themselves, while Bennett (3.34) and Andrei Svechnikov (3.32) are on the ice for plenty of chances. To the surprise of no one, a lot of this section is made up of Panthers and Hurricanes players, two of the heaviest forechecking teams in the league.

But what about the other side of the puck? Despite the fact that physicality primarily exists when a team doesn’t have the puck, the stereotypical grinder or enforcer usually struggles in this regard, because their heavy frame and slow pace often make it easier for opposing teams to get around them. But this isn’t the case with every player, so let’s see which ones excel at preventing chances, as well as driving play overall.

Once again, we have some familiar faces in Carrier, Gadjovich and Tkachuk, but one consistent appearance in both regards is Garnet Hathaway. He isn’t an elite play driver (52.47% 5v5 xGF%), but he is consistently very strong defensively (2.18 5v5 xGA/60), which is what also drives his overall expected goal share. Considering that his head coaches with the Philadelphia Flyers in John Tortorella and Rick Tocchet are very structured, it’s not a surprise he’s thriving in that environment. Marcus Foligno also shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, as he’s been an underrated defensive forward for the Minnesota Wild for many years now.

There are a couple surprises when we compare hits to xGA/60 in Nicolas Deslauriers and Ryan Reaves, as both players have a reputation for being the old-school enforcer type who aren’t really good outside of the physical element they bring to the table. But while they do have good defensive numbers (2.37 and 2.4 5v5 xGA/60 respectively), their chance generation is so horrible (1.92 and 2.03 5v5 xGF/60) it offsets their defensive contributions.

As you can see, there’s a reason why building a team identity around physicality and toughness is so hard to do: the number of players who have that element in their game while also being high-end forwards elsewhere are few and far between. For every Carrier or Tkachuk, there’s plenty of other big forwards who just throw the body around a few times and call it a day. Teams really need to do their homework if they want to bring in this type of player, because a couple misses creates a slippery slope to ending a contention window.

One interesting takeaway from this experiment has been the lack of defensemen, as not a single one came up, which is surprising considering how some teams are shifting towards a big-bodied blueline. Some of that is because a defenseman’s physical value is portrayed less in hits and more in their ability to maintain positioning in front of the net and box out forwards, but perhaps it also means teams should prioritize puck-moving defensemen on their back end.

Before we wrap up, let’s quickly dive into the players on the other end, the physical players who are ineffective elsewhere. I won’t break down the players and stats this time, but I’ll at least list below the outliers in each stat I compared hits to.

5v5 G/60: Nicolas Deslauriers, Ross Johnston, Jeremy Lauzon, Liam O’Brien, Luke Schenn
5v5 P1/60: Nicolas Deslauriers, Ross Johnston, Jeremy Lauzon, Luke Schenn
5v5 ixGF/60: Ross Johnston, Jeremy Lauzon, Luke Schenn
5v5 xGF/60: Sammy Blais, Nicolas Deslauriers, Ross Johnston, Ryan Reaves
5v5 xGA/60: Josh Brown, Luke Kunin, Kiefer Sherwood
5v5 xGF%: Sammy Blais, Nicolas Deslauriers, Ross Johnston, Michael Pezzetta

POST SPONSORED BY bet365

_____

Recently by Scott Maxwell

MORE FACEOFF.IN YOUR INBOX.

CLICK TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR DAILY NEWSLETTER