Wondering

A couple days ago there was a post discussing right hand/shot v left hand/shot. Seeing as there has been no games to watch I decided to dig into this a little bit more. It is of particular interest to me because I am left handed for fine motor skills (writing and using utensils to deliver food to my face) and right handed for gross motor skills like playing lacrosse (although I learned to pass and catch with both hands out of necessity), hockey, football, golf and racquet sports.

Handedness is a human’s preference for using one hand over the other because it is more dextrous, faster and stronger. 90% of the population is right handed, 10% is left handed and there is a small fraction of the population that is truly ambidextrous (equally dominant with both hands) and cross dominant (use certain hands for certain tasks). 

There is also eye dominance where visual input is preferred in one eye over the other, 70% of the population is right eye dominant. Think of aiming to shoot a gun or a bow and arrow. Which eye would you line up?

Below are some numbers I was able to find for handedness amongst pro athletes. Some were very easy to find and some a little more difficult.

924 Skaters played in the NHL in 2023-24. 61.7% were left shot.. 57.5% of defensemen were left shot and 63.9% of forwards were left shot. 98 goalies played and 91 of them used their left hand to catch. This likely means they are left shot hockey players and right handed for throwing a ball, think baseball catch left throw right. Side note: apparently Vasilevskiy would have preferred to catch right handed as a youth but the equipment wasn’t available to him so he learned to play goalie catching with his left hand. 

In the PGA 5-7% of the golfers on tour at any point in time are left handed. There have only been 14 left handed golfers to win on the tour, with Phil Mickelson leading the way at 45 wins. 

On the current 40 man rosters* in the American League with the MLB there are 666 athletes.
In terms of hitting 27.6% bat left, 67.6% bat right, and 4.8% are switch hitters (about two per team).  19.2% throw left handed and 80.8% throw right handed. *getting this data would have been much easier if they were actually 40man rosters, I counted players on the Injury list because the data was there.

The NBA doesn’t list what hand players shoot with on their website but I was able to find that in 2022 39 left handed shooters played in the NBA and approximately 550 players dressed for a game that season making 7.1% of players left handed shooters.

Last year in the NFL 75 quarterbacks threw a pass. 1 of them was left handed, Tua Tagovailoa. Making 1.33% of QBs left handed. Again the NFL website doesn’t list what foot kickers (place kickers and punters) use. 

The National Lacrosse League (box lacrosse) also doesn’t list handedness for players. From my experience being involved with amateur and professional lacrosse, teams aim to balance their rosters with left and right handed players, especially on offense. In the field lacrosse form that is more prevalent in the US, players have a dominant hand but are very capable of playing both ways. My guess is that the numbers here would be close to 50/50.
I tried to find data on cricket and handball. Nothing was readily available and I didn’t want to dig too deep. 

In summary hockey is an outlier with a majority of the players being left handed shots. I mentioned a theory that young kids first play mini sticks one handed holding with their right hand and as they transition to bigger sticks and playing hockey they keep their right hand on the top and put their left hand on the bottom making them left shooters. Those that end up right handed likely do so because their dominant hand/foot is their right. Meaning they throw and kick with their right hand/foot. The mechanics of throwing, shooting, swinging and striking are very similar and right handed hockey players at a young age probably feel more comfortable rotating around their left foot and hip with their right arm.