2025/26 NHL aggression index: Who were the league's most/least aggressive teams last season?

ANALYSES09 Jul 2026

6 min. read

NHL Game at Madison Square Garden, New York, United States / Credit: UNSPLASH

The Carolina Hurricanes were victorious over the Vegas Golden Knights in the Stanley Cup last month, and now with the draft complete and free agency opening up, the research team at Casino Guru decided to look back at the 2025/26 season to reveal the league's most and least aggressive teams.

To find the league's most aggressive teams, an Aggression Index was developed using five indicators of physical play: penalty minutes (PIM), major penalties, fights, hits, and player suspensions or fines. Each category was weighted to create a final score out of 100, allowing every team to be ranked from least to most aggressive.

Key Highlights:

Tampa Bay Lightning were the league's most aggressive team with a score of 87.89 out of 100, having the most major penalties (46), PIM (1,296) and fights (45) last season
The Detroit Red Wings were the league's least aggressive team with a score of 6.80 out of 100, with the joint least major penalties and 2nd least PIM.
Boston Bruins (2nd) and Anaheim Ducks (3rd) make up the rest of the top 3most aggressive teams with respective scores of 68.04/100 and 55.44/100.
Colorado Avalanche (2nd) and Seattle Kraken (3rd) make up the top 3 least aggressive teams with respectivescores of 10.71/100 and 10.87/100.
The Vegas Golden Knights gave out the most hits last season and found themselves as the 9thmost aggressive team (39.31/100).

The NHL’s Most Aggressive Teams

Tampa Bay Lightning led the way as the league’s most aggressive team last season with a score of 87.89 out of 100, and to most fans this may not come as a huge surprise.

Last season the team got themselves into hot water often. Notably in the series finale of the ‘Battle of Florida’ which saw both the Bolts and Panthers sharing 147 penalty minutes and 61 hits between them.

Focusing just on Tampa though they ranked top in the league for 3 of the 5 metrics used to measure aggression within this index. They ended the season with 46 major penalties, 1,296 penalties in minutes and 45 fights throughout the season, highlighting the true aggression they showed last season.

Next comes the Boston Bruins as the 2nd most aggressive with a score of 68.04/100, famous for their "Big Bad Bruins" identity. They ended the season with 2,094 hits, 1,101 PIM, 37 major penalties, and 34 fights.

Despite having their ‘famous identity’ they were outranked by the Bolts in 4 out of 5 of the aggression metrics, but they did finish with more hits.

Completing the top 3 most aggressive teams in the league is the Anaheim Ducks, having a score of 55.44/100. The Ducks didn't just make a return to the playoffs after a seven-season playoff drought; they paired that success with becoming the Western Conference's most aggressive team according to the index.

The team ended the season with 2,147 hits, 889 PIM, 31 major penalties and 27 fights, showing just how aggressive of a team they were in 2025/26.

The NHL’s Least Aggressive Teams

Now to the other side of the aggression index, we have the Detroit Red Wings as the least aggressive team in the NHL with a score of 6.80 out of 100.

The Red Wings showed signs of improvement with a 92-point season but ultimately missed the playoffs for a 10th straight year. Their less aggressive approach was reflected with just 629 penalty minutes, one of the lowest totals in the league, along with only 11 major penalties and 11 fights, both of which tied for the fewest in the NHL.

Following the Red Wings is the Colorado Avalanche who came in as the league’s 2nd least aggressive team with a score of 10.71 out of 100. The team ended the season with 1717 hits, 705 PIM, 11 major penalties, and 10 fights.

The Avs proved that success doesn't require an aggressive team. Despite finishing second-last in our NHL Aggression Index, Colorado posted the league's best regular-season record, won the Presidents Trophy and made it to the Western Conference Final where they lost out to the Vegas Golden Knights.

Rounding out the 3 least aggressive teams is the Seattle Kraken, who scored 10.87 out of 100. They ended the season with 1,517 hits, 616 PIM, 16 major penalties and 16 fights – the lower PIM compared to teams around them resulted in them being the 3rd least aggressive team.

In terms of success on the ice, despite managing to avoid big penalties and a solid league discipline, they missed the playoffs for a third consecutive season.

Full League Aggression Index

Rank	Team	Aggression Index / 100	Hits (15%)	PIM (30%)	Majors (25%)	Fights (20%)	Susp/Fines (10%)
1	Tampa Bay Lightning	87.89	1870	1296	46	45	6
2	Boston Bruins	68.04	2094	1101	37	34	3
3	Anaheim Ducks	55.44	2147	889	31	27	4
4	Montreal Canadiens	53.32	2394	1160	20	20	1
5	Philadelphia Flyers	50.10	2302	975	25	25	1
6	Florida Panthers	46.63	2024	922	21	20	5
7	Buffalo Sabres	45.41	1950	1014	24	23	1
8	Ottawa Senators	42.69	2126	837	23	22	3
9	Vegas Golden Knights	39.31	2487	784	22	20	1
10	Calgary Flames	36.62	1660	871	23	23	2
11	Utah Mammoth	33.44	1830	832	20	20	2
12	Minnesota Wild	30.53	2115	744	21	21	0
13	Edmonton Oilers	30.27	1757	789	23	23	0
14	Toronto Maple Leafs	29.38	1870	756	19	19	2
15	Washington Capitals	28.91	1615	783	22	22	1
16	Carolina Hurricanes	27.60	2319	861	9	9	2
17	Dallas Stars	25.89	1729	765	15	13	4
18	New York Rangers	24.63	2112	667	19	19	0
19	Pittsburgh Penguins	24.21	1643	770	16	14	3
20	St. Louis Blues	23.88	1796	645	23	22	0
21	Columbus Blue Jackets	20.80	1577	653	23	21	0
22	Los Angeles Kings	20.12	1804	725	17	16	0
23	Winnipeg Jets	19.13	1776	653	17	17	1
24	Nashville Predators	18.96	1576	719	15	15	2
25	Vancouver Canucks	18.57	1739	707	15	15	1
26	San Jose Sharks	16.63	1794	720	14	14	0
27	New Jersey Devils	15.38	1514	618	18	18	1
28	New York Islanders	14.33	1599	643	13	11	3
29	Chicago Blackhawks	12.57	1346	716	14	14	1
30	Seattle Kraken	10.87	1517	616	16	16	0
31	Colorado Avalanche	10.71	1717	705	11	10	1
32	Detroit Red Wings	6.80	1480	629	11	11	1

Methodology

The Aggression Index ranks all 32 NHL teams based on five measures of physical play across the 2025–26 regular season and Stanley Cup Playoffs. Teams were assessed using penalty minutes (30%), major penalties (25%), fights (20%), hits (15%), and player suspensions/fines (10%).

Each category was normalized to a 0–100 scale before the weighted scores were combined to produce an overall Aggression Index, where 0 represents the league's least aggressive team and 100 the most aggressive.

To ensure fairness, a separate per-game analysis was also conducted to account for teams playing additional playoff games. While longer postseason runs naturally increase counting statistics, the per-game rankings were almost identical to the overall results, showing a very strong correlation (Spearman's rho = 0.92).

This indicates the Aggression Index reflects a team's overall style of play rather than simply rewarding teams that played more games. Data was collected at the conclusion of the 2025–26 NHL season (June 2026).

Sources

Hits: NHL.com Stats API (team real time report), reg + playoffs.

PIM & Major Penalties: NHL.com Stats API (team penalties report), reg + playoffs.

Fights: HockeyFights.com (regular season + postseason).

Suspensions/Fines: Wikipedia '2025-26 NHL suspensions and fines' / Spotrac fines tracker.

Fair Use

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