NHL's most inexplicable seasons: Ken Baumgartner

Enforcer Ken Baumgartner's offensive output in the 1997-98 season was unlike anything the league has ever seen.

Video Transcript

NICK ASHBOURNE: In over 100 years of NHL history we've seen all kinds of oddballs on the ice. And in this series, we're going to look at some of those inexplicable individual campaigns of all time.

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Since the NHL moved to an 82 game season in 1995 there have been 1,885 instances of a player playing all 82. Ken Baumgartner's 1997-98 is unique in that group from an offensive output perspective and not in a good way. Of that group of 1,885, 1,884 got at least four points. Ken Baumgartner got just one. By far, the least offensively productive season in recent NHL history. In fact, since the NHL changed to 82 games every player that's played 65 games or more other than Baumgartner has gotten more than one point.

Whether you're the ultimate defensive defenseman or enforcer who plays five minutes a night, one of your passes normally finds a teammate in scoring position or a couple of your shots no matter how weak they are get through. In that year, Baumgartner took only 28 shots and none of them found the twine. We don't have any data on the number of passes he made but it took his 73rd game of the season, April 1st 1998, before one of them led to a goal and it was a secondary assist. We don't have the footage, but I'm going to ascribe the goal to you. In this case, Baumgartner passed a teammate Landon Wilson who took the puck all the way around the net heroically fighting off a defender and passing in front from Mike Sullivan, who just had to tap it in. The reason I give you that description is to tell you that Baumgartner had nothing to do with the only goal he had a point on in 1997-98.

This is an inexplicable season in the context of NHL history, but for Baumgartner it was kind of just a more extreme version of what he'd done already. This was a true enforcer who had 2,242 penalty minutes in his career against just 54 points. He had three different seasons that he finished with exactly 1 point and each of them he played at least 55 games. Baumgartner was on the ice for 5 minutes and 46 seconds per game.

To put that number in perspective, if Connor McDavid got that amount of ice time and scored at the rate he did in 2022-23 when he had 153 points he would have ended the season with just 39. Baumgartner was actually on the ice for only three goals in all of 1997-98. That means if he was in on every single goal he was on the ice for he still would have set the record for the fewest points in an 82 game season.

While the 31-year-old bruiser probably just looked like he was doing the same thing he'd been doing for years, in reality the NHL had never seen anything like it. What's the most inexplicable season you can remember in NHL history? Drop it down in the comments.

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