Jeremy Lauzon Sets A League Record For Hits in Nashville Predators Season Finale

In a season to remember for Nashville Predators fans, one player has set a league record in the final game of the season.

Going into the final game against the Pittsburg Penguins, Jeremy Lauzon needed 8 hits to capture the record from Matt Martin, who had owned and beat his own record several times already. Lauzon had his presence known in the game, which ended as a 4-2 loss for the Predators, with 9 hits in the game. That put Lauzon's total at 383 for the season, resulting in the record for hits in a season.

To put it in perspective, in order to accomplish this, Lauzon had to average 4.8 hits a game. He also only played in 79 contests this season, which hurt his total.

Lauzon Makes History for Playoff Bound Nashville Predators

Across his season, Lauzon's highest in-game total this season was 12 hits, which he recorded in a loss to the Vegas Golden Knights on January 15th. He recorded double-digit hits another three times, notching 11 once and 10 twice. Surprisingly Lauzon recorded zero hits in two games, once against Toronto and another time against the Ducks. Five hits were his most often recorded total, a result that occurred 18 times this season.

The definition of a hit in the NHL is essentially forceful and legal body-to-body contact. How the NHL credits hits though is subjective to the home area and their off-ice official scorekeepers. The actual dolling out of hits depends on people in various arenas across the league and how they interpret the NHL's vague definition of a hit.

This quote comes from Russell Levine, the NHL's group vice president of stats and information. “With everything we do, we try to see consistency from building to building across the league, and obviously, we have certain stats that are completely objective and others which involve some level of subjectivity,” Levine said. “And a hit obviously involves some level of subjectivity. We’ve had a definition for the off-ice officials for a number of years that tries to define what should be scored as a hit. It still involves a level of subjectivity. And I think as we looked at the numbers this year, we saw some inconsistency to the point that we wanted to take a look at it.”

There was an audit that happened earlier this season that increased the average amount of hits doled out per game by nearly nine. For Lauzon, the audit took him from 200 hits at the time to 229 hits. Obviously, this is not an NHL statistic that you want to be betting on unless you trust your off-ice official to record hits accurately or you've got a guy who usually hits the over.

Regardless, thanks to sports betting, the push to record hits accurately has been one of the league's initiatives for this season, and Lauzon has benefitted from that. On the record, he is quoted as saying

“It feels pretty good,” Lauzon said. “Obviously, that was something I wanted to achieve this year, and I was able to do it. And I guess there's a lot of years left in my career, so next year, we'll try to break it again.”

Head Coach Andrew Brunette also weighed in on Lauzon getting the NHL record for hits, per Zach Gilchriest of the team's official website:

“He's obviously been a big part of our team and we’re really happy for the record,” Brunette said. “It's going to be a hard record to duplicate. I think he's turned himself into one of the elite defenders in the League with his length and his skating ability, and obviously his physicality. So. I'm happy for him.”

Congratulations to Jeremy Lauzon, who is primed for the more physical and harder-hitting style of playoff hockey.