what is with secondary assists in hockey?

craig44

Why is it that the guy who passed the puck to the guy who passed the puck to the guy that scores also gets an assist?

sure seems like stat padding to me. is there any other sport that does this? What am I not getting here?

perkdog

They are trying to incorporate geek stats into the NHL

It's probably all for analytics that is going to be the tool for evaluating players

JoeBanzai

@craig44 said:
Why is it that the guy who passed the puck to the guy who passed the puck to the guy that scores also gets an assist?

sure seems like stat padding to me. is there any other sport that does this? What am I not getting here?

I never understood this either. Sometimes a goalie will shove the puck to a defenseman after making a save and the defenseman makes a great pass to a streaking winger who scores a highlight reel goal. The goalie gets credited with an assist, if I am not mistaken.
It's just always been that way.
On the other hand, earlier this season, my guy Kaprizov made a great play keeping the puck in the offensive zone, made an amazing pass to a teammate and a goal was scored after a couple of good but unspectacular passes. He got no credit on the play that would never have happened had he not made not one, but two very good plays.

craig44

Have "real" assists ever been tracked? I wonder how many of McDavid's assists are "real" or Gretzky or Lemieux?

Like goals are worth more than assists, I would say assists are worth more than secondary assists.

dallasactuary

@craig44 said:
Have "real" assists ever been tracked? I wonder how many of McDavid's assists are "real" or Gretzky or Lemieux?

Like goals are worth more than assists, I would say assists are worth more than secondary assists.

They do track them; you can see them broken out here: https://icydata.hockey/player_stats/primary-and-secondary/39/stats

I have thought that a better, though still far from perfect, way to count "points" would be 3 for a goal, 2 for a primary assist, and 1 for a secondary assist. But, if you look at the break out, I don't think it would change the order of the leaders by all that much. It would generally drop defensemen down the leaderboard, since more of their assists are secondary, but the ratio of primary to secondary assists among wings and centers doesn't vary by as much as you might think.

craig44

@dallasactuary said:

@craig44 said:
Have "real" assists ever been tracked? I wonder how many of McDavid's assists are "real" or Gretzky or Lemieux?

Like goals are worth more than assists, I would say assists are worth more than secondary assists.

They do track them; you can see them broken out here: https://icydata.hockey/player_stats/primary-and-secondary/39/stats

I have thought that a better, though still far from perfect, way to count "points" would be 3 for a goal, 2 for a primary assist, and 1 for a secondary assist. But, if you look at the break out, I don't think it would change the order of the leaders by all that much. It would generally drop defensemen down the leaderboard, since more of their assists are secondary, but the ratio of primary to secondary assists among wings and centers doesn't vary by as much as you might think.

I think your tiered points leaderboard makes a lot of sense.

georgebailey2

The outlet pass that creates an odd man rush or a pass to create a scoring opportunity that gets deflected in are worthy.

And sometimes the primary assist is the most important part of the play.
https://youtu.be/GgnzZZ7cduQ

JoeBanzai

@georgebailey2 said:
The outlet pass that creates an odd man rush or a pass to create a scoring opportunity that gets deflected in are worthy.

And sometimes the primary assist is the most important part of the play.
https://youtu.be/GgnzZZ7cduQ

Absolutely, some goals are simple tip in's that take little skill.

dallasactuary

@JoeBanzai said:

@georgebailey2 said:
The outlet pass that creates an odd man rush or a pass to create a scoring opportunity that gets deflected in are worthy.

And sometimes the primary assist is the most important part of the play.

Absolutely, some goals are simple tip in's that take little skill.

And that's where counting "points" in hockey sort of breaks down. The play that required the most skill/effort and that really made the goal possible can be the goal itself, the primary assist, the secondary assist, or the play before that or even the play before that. At the end of the season the points leaderboard is going to line up reasonably well with a "best offensive player" list, so the stat is certainly not meaningless, but there are always going to be some players who are too high or too low because of particularly helpful or harmful circumstances. Similar to plus/minus - which is of limited use comparing players on different teams, and is completely useless comparing players on good teams to players on bad teams - points do a better job of identifying how a player compares to his own teammates than to the league as a whole. I think McDavid probably is the best offensive player in the league, but I'm a lot more certain that he is the best offensive player on the Oilers. But (1) hockey, like football, is a team game, and there is no such thing as a stat or even a combination of stats that can isolate what any player does from what his teammates do, and (2) the stats that measure defensive contributions are an order of magnitude less reliable than even "points" on offense, so identifying a "best player" will always involve as much opinion as fact.

PillarDollarCollector

Weird I admit but I doubt they will change that is so not many will ever reach 1000 points let alone 1500 points or more.

Basebal21

@perkdog said:
They are trying to incorporate geek stats into the NHL

It's probably all for analytics that is going to be the tool for evaluating players

2nd assists have been around for decades. In this case it has nothing to do with analytics and many if not all teams will filter them out in evaluations