UPDATE
Here’s some links I’ve found that discuss the topic of second assists more:
Jamie Fitzpatrick discusses the give-and-go and line change scenarios that make the 2nd assist weak.
Interesting article from the Denver Post. Apparently Chris Snow, Wild director of hockey operations, has started to individually track first assists and second assists.
You haven’t heard the last from me on this one. I’ll try to periodically track the NHL scoring race and show the adjusted leaders minus their second assists.
-Brian
I haven’t posted in like 2 years, but I figured I’d post this because I found it a bit interesting. Matt’s probably wondering a) how did Brian remember his WordPress blogger login info? (it was saved on my computer with Firefox password saving) and/or b) is Brian really still registered as a contributor to this site? (apparently I am, for now at least…). But that’s part of the fun.
Thought it’d be interesting to see what the points race would look like if you subtracted out 2nd assists (through today’s games). I just took the top five in points and subtracted out of their 2nd assists:
Kovalchuk 34 adj pts
Lecavalier 31 adj pts
Crosby 31 adj pts
Zetterberg 28 adj pts
Iginla 27 adj pts
With 2nd assists included however,
Lecavalier 42 pts
Kovalchuk 37 pts
Zetterberg 37 pts
Crosby 37 pts
Iginla 36 pts
Pretty much what I expected - obviously it’s going to hurt the playmakers in some way and favor the goal scorers. I just wanted to see who had the most primary assists among these players and if there was anyone who had a disproportionate number of secondary assists.
Kovalchuk is the leading goal scorer (and only has 3 second assists), so he leads in that adjusted format. Lecavalier has 11 second assists of his 24 assists, while Crosby only has 6 second assists of his 23 assists. Zetterberg has 9 second assists of 19 assists. Of the players listed, Henrik had the only second assist on an empty net goal! I was expecting a few more of those than just that one for all these players. Finally, Iginla has 9 second assists of his 21 assists.
Note: Daniel Alfredsson left off due to time constraints (He currently has 37 points).
It’d be nice if the League provided a way to differentiate between second assists that actually have a direct bearing on the play and those that do not. There are a lot of second assists that are pretty empty and basically ceremonial, while others are actually well-deserved. When you have a line like the Holmstrom-Datsyuk-Zetterberg line, a lot of the second assists mean something.
That is interesting, Brian, but 4 of those 5 players would be home painting the barn if the playoffs started tomorrow.
To see an adjusted top 10 list, check out this post.
http://hockeytowntodd.blogspot.com/2007/12/looking-at-top-10.html
Matt,
Good point, I was thinking about that as well. It’d be nice if the NHL could distinguish between a 2nd assist on a re-directed goal, where the 2nd assist is actually the primary pass and the 1st assist is the shot, and a 2nd assist when that player just happens to pass it to the genius passer who makes the play.
Jamie Fitzpatrick has a good post on 2nd assists below:
http://proicehockey.about.com/b/2006/11/26/when-statistics-lie-hockeys-second-assist.htm
Jamie brings up the give-and-go scenario, where the 2nd assist doesn’t mean that much. Player C can dump it off to player B, who passes it back and forth with player A before player B scores. Player C comes up with the 2nd assist, even though technically player B should have his own 2nd assist.
He also brings up the possibility that the player receiving a 2nd assist could have just dumped the puck in for a line change and be on the bench during the goal.
HockeyTownTodd,
That’s an interesting twist on the points race. Hopefully some of these teams that have been struggling pick it up so these players make the post-season.
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