As a huge sports fan who works in and writes about the energy industry, stumbling across this article that compared the kinetic energy produced by the high velocity projectiles in different sports got my creative juices flowing. By the estimates in that article, shooting a hockey puck produces the highest kinetic energy in all of sports.

Not only does it appear that hockey can take the ‘energy crown’ in sports, but a common occurrence during a hockey game is a ‘power play.’ A power play occurs when the referee determines that a player has committed a foul and that player is sent to spend a set number of minutes in the penalty box. During that time in the penalty box, the opposing team has the advantage of one additional player and are said to be on a power play– and if they score during that time then it is called a power play goal. While this power play has absolutely nothing to do with power plants or power generation, the idea that hockey pucks have the most kinetic energy in sports got me to wondering about what sort of power generation could be harnessed by power play goals in the National Hockey League (NHL).

If we wanted to harness the power of power plays (why would we want do do that? Maybe it’s the part of a plot by a wacky cartoon villain!), how much would that be? Why don’t we sit down and do the math!

Energy from a hockey puck

To start, we need to determine what the energy of a single hockey shot should be assumed to be (as the previously mentioned article does not include all of the necessary assumptions for academic rigor). High school physics class taught us that the kinetic energy is determined by taking one half times the mass of the object times the square of the speed of that object.

Official ice hockey pucks weigh 170 grams, so we just need to figure out what to assume as the speed of the puck. Obviously every shot of the puck comes at a different speed depending on who is shooting, what type of shot is used (e.g., slap shot vs. wrist shot), how fatigued the player is, the condition of the ice, and many other factors. But for the sake of this back-of-the-envelope calculation, we can look at a couple of data points for reference:

The official NHL record for shot speed is 108.8 miles per hour (MPH) by Zdeno Chara in the 2012 All-Star Skills Competition;
Guinness World Records recognizes the hardest recorded ice hockey shot in any competition as 110.3 MPH by Denis Kulyash in the 2011 Continental Hockey League’s All-Star Skills Competition;
When discussing the benchmark of a particularly strong slapshot, 100 MPH is often used as the benchmark of a player getting everything behind a shot;
Finding benchmarks for the wrist shot is not as prevalent (people like to discuss the hardest shots possible, hence data on slap shots and not wrist shots), but some estimates show that wrist shots can reach speeds of 80 to 90 MPH; and
Estimates put wrist shots as accounting for 23 to 37 percent of all shots taken in professional hockey.

Given those figures, a rough estimate of average NHL shot speed can be determined by assuming slap shots are about 100 MPH and account for 70 percent of shots, while wrist shots are about 85 MPH and account for 30 percent of shots:

For the sake of this exercise, we’ll call the speed of a NHL shot 95.5 MPH, which equals about 42.7 meters per second (m/s). Plugging that speed and the 170 gram weight of the puck into our kinetic energy equation leaves us with an assumed ‘Power Play Power’ of an NHL power play goal of 154.9 Joules (J)– just over 0.04 kilowatt-hours (kWh).

For the rest of this article, we’ll refer to the energy gathered from power play goals, 154.9 J at a time, as ‘Power Play Power’– though please keep in mind the cardinal rule that power is the rate of energy over time, while the Joules and kilowatt-hours we’re talking about is total energy.

How much power can be harnessed from power plays?

The next step in reality would be to figure out how exactly you intend to extract ‘Power Play Power’ into actually generated energy, though that can be left up to the hypothetical cartoon villain who would be using such odd methods to create energy for his evil plots, as he did with the champagne bottles on New Year’s Eve (Side note, if I continue to write articles about the bizarre energy sources only thought up by a misguided cartoon villain, he needs a name– so in the spirit of villains like Megatron, Megamind, and Mega Shark, the energy-obsessed villain will be named Megawatt!)

But ignoring the question of how or why we would be extracting energy from ‘Power Play Power,’ let’s just look at what type of power will be generated based on 154.9 J per power play goal. Also note that there’s nothing special about the energy generated by a power play goal compared with a regular goal or even a shot that misses the goal– but where would the fun be without wordplay? POWER play goals only!

Most individual power play goals in a season

Note that all of the statistics pulled for this analysis are current as of January 1, 2018. Any power play goals scored after that date will not be accounted for in these statistics and calculations.

Pulling the top 10 individual player seasons with the most power play goals in NHL history, and assuming each of those power play goals account for 154.9 J, gives the following results:
Despite an impressive 34 power play goals in the 1985-86 season, Tim Kerr’s NHL record season would only generate enough ‘Power Play Power’ to run a large window-unit air conditioner for one hour at almost 1.5 kWh.

What about considering single players over their entire career?

Most individual power play goals over a career

As of January 1, 2018, the top 10 power play goal scorers for an entire career are as follows (note that as of writing, Alex Ovechkin is still active, as is Jaromir Jagr who is only two power play goals behind him in 11th place):

Looking at Dave Andreychuk, the individual with the most career power play goals in NHL history, his career ‘Power Play Power’ accounts for almost 11.8 kWh. Despite being an incredibly impressive number of power play goals, it’s only enough to power an energy-efficient refrigerator for about a week and a half. That’s a useful amount of energy to use in your home, but when it takes 274 career power play goals that that might be more work than it’s worth…

However looking at these first two charts, one aspect really jumps out– players who come from Canada appear to dominate ‘Power Play Power’ generation! Let’s dig into that a bit more.

Most power play goals by country of origin in the NHL

To start, Quant Hockey’s data shows that there are only 25 different home countries across all the players who have ever scored a power play goal in NHL history. Those 25 countries are listed in the below chart with their respective ‘Power Play Power’ totals generated:

Now we’re talking about some real energy. Canada, as predicted, dominates with almost 2,250 kWh of ‘Power Play Power’ since the beginning of the NHL. This amount of energy equates to about 20% of the average annual electricity used by an American household in 2016.

So that’s a pretty significant amount of energy on a micro-scale, but because we’re talking about the total ‘Power Play Power’ generated by all Canadian NHL players over nearly a century of play it is still not terribly impressive. For reference, the smallest nuclear power plant in the United States has a generation capacity of 582 Megawatts, meaning the 2,250 kWh of ‘Power Play Power’ of Canadian NHL players would be generated in under 14 seconds by the smallest U.S. nuclear plant operating at full capacity. Even if we included all power play goals scored by players of any nationality, the total ‘Power Play Power’ would only reach 3,339 kWh– or almost 21 seconds from the smallest U.S. nuclear plant.

*Source:* *Green and Practical* & *YouTube*

Obviously the actual energy generation of each of these 25 nations will be much greater than the ‘Power Play Power’ generated by their respective NHL players– but is there some sort of correlation between ‘Power Play Power’ and actual energy production of the nations? Using the silly initial premise of this article as an example of the type of information available from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), a part of the U.S. Department of Energy, and how to find that data, we can pull the total primary energy production for these 25 countries and get a rough idea! While the NHL started recording power play goals in the 1933-34 season, EIA’s country-by-country energy production data dates back to 1980 (measured using quadrillion British thermal units, or quads), but we’ll still use these two complete time frames for the comparison’s sake. Putting the two energy figures on one graph for a relative comparison provides the following:

This graph presents a couple of interesting points:

Among the 25 eligible nations included in the survey, Canada, the United States, and Russia all find themselves in the top 4 countries in terms of both ‘Power Play Power’ and Total Primary Energy Produced by the nation;
In an interesting coincidence, when the two types of energy being measured here are put on comparative scales, Canada and the United States appear to be almost mirror images of each other, swapping relative strength in ‘Power Play Power’ and Total Primary Energy Production;
In another similarity between the two measures of energy, the totality is dominated by the top three nations, and the relative scale of any nation after about the halfway point shows up as barely even a blip on this graph.

But other than that, it can be considered fairly unsurprising that NHL power play success doesn’t directly translate to Total Primary Energy Produced by nation. And even if Canada saw their NHL power play prowess as their opportunity to increase energy exports (which would only serve to increase the fact that Canada is the largest energy trading partner of the United States), translating ‘Power Play Power’ into real energy, their 2,250 kWh over NHL history would only translate to 0.00000004% of Canada’s primary energy produced in 2015 alone. Unfortunately, I do not think I’ve discovered a viable energy to be harnessed by the villainous Megawatt.

*Source:* *U.S. Energy Information Administration*

More benevolently, it would also appear that ‘Power Play Power’ will not serve as a reliable new renewable energy source for hockey-crazed areas (in this scenario, are we to consider penalty minutes a source of renewable energy?? If so, Tiger Williams might be the most environmentally friendly player in major sports history). However, at 419 billion kWh of renewable generation in 2015, Canada is the fourth largest renewable energy producer worldwide (with the United States and Canada being the only nations this time to finds themselves in the top four of of renewable energy and ‘Power Play Power,’ as North America accounts for majority of NHL players and has collectively agreed to generate 50% of electricity from clean sources by 2025). Following the link for EIA international renewable energy data to bring this back to educational purposes, you’ll find other top-15 ‘Power Play Power’ nations that also account for the top-15 in global renewable energy production, including the United States, Germany, Russia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

Coincidence? Probably.

Interesting and informative, nonetheless? Definitely!

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For some more analysis of the intersection of sports and energy, see how the 2017-18 NFL season would play out if it was decided by sustainability, the 2018 Green March Madness Tournament, a look at what happens to electricity demand on Super Bowl Sunday, and some tongue-in-cheek questions at the intersection of professional wrestling and energy.