Interested in the history of the assist

Black Gold Extractor

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The Canadiens have a history portion of their website that describes rule changes that affected avenues of passing. It's not exactly what you're looking for, but it's a start.

I can't find the original HoH thread (thanks to the move to Xenforo), but this page uses that as a source. Tertiary assists were allowed between 1930 and 1936. In 1931-32 and 1932-33, assists were awarded only to players in the offensive zone.

Bizarrely, the league decided on removing the secondary assist for the 1945-46 season, and then only semi-implemented it for that one season (i.e. forbidding the awarding of a secondary assist in particular circumstances). Of course, there was backlash from the press about assists (supposedly) denied to players arbitrarily, and the league backtracked all the way the following season.

Of course, since we're talking about the NHL, the following season, there was a controversy over Chicago (supposedly) awarding assists arbitrarily, which resulted in Max Bentley edging out the Rocket for the Art Ross by 1 point.
 

Hockey Outsider

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I realize this isn't quite what you're looking for, but here's a graph showing assists per goal, starting with the 1926-27 season (the first year that North American professional hockey was consolidated into one league):

upload_2019-1-1_21-12-55.png


There have been at least 1.60 assists per goal in every season dating back to 1957. The table above also shows the decrease in assists that BGE referred to above.
 

Hippasus

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Based on looking at scoring leaders in terms of the breakdown between goals and assists of the individual players, I would add the following seasons for possible seasons of one assist maximum awarded per goal: 1917-18 through 1928-29. The scorekeepers may have also been extra discretionary in giving out assists.
 

Vujtek

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I can't find the original HoH thread (thanks to the move to Xenforo), but this page uses that as a source. Tertiary assists were allowed between 1930 and 1936. In 1931-32 and 1932-33, assists were awarded only to players in the offensive zone.

Based on the scoring logs on NHL.com tertiary assists (NOTE. their software doesn't list them on scoring logs but the assists are in player stat totals) were awarded only during 1934-35 and 1935-36 seasons.

In fact there is even one goal where they awarded four assists. On January 10th, 1935 in a game between Toronto Maple Leafs and New York Americans, Leafs' 2nd goal of the game goes as:

J.Primeau (C.Conacher, A.Blair, B.Cotton, B.Jackson)
 

Black Gold Extractor

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Based on looking at scoring leaders in terms of the breakdown between goals and assists of the individual players, I would add the following seasons for possible seasons of one assist maximum awarded per goal: 1917-18 through 1928-29. The scorekeepers may have also been extra discretionary in giving out assists.

I think that has more to do with the restrictions on forward passing than an actual imposed limit. Like, "Morenz from behind the net to Joliat, who drop passes to Gagne, who shoots and scores!" isn't an impossible sequence back then, but if you're a defender, you can probably break up any sequence pretty easily if there's only one direction your opponent can pass toward.
 

Hippasus

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I think that has more to do with the restrictions on forward passing than an actual imposed limit. Like, "Morenz from behind the net to Joliat, who drop passes to Gagne, who shoots and scores!" isn't an impossible sequence back then, but if you're a defender, you can probably break up any sequence pretty easily if there's only one direction your opponent can pass toward.
You could be right. I haven't been able to support my contention yet.
 

Vujtek

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Based on looking at scoring leaders in terms of the breakdown between goals and assists of the individual players, I would add the following seasons for possible seasons of one assist maximum awarded per goal: 1917-18 through 1928-29. The scorekeepers may have also been extra discretionary in giving out assists.

While there was no rule in place preventing secondary assists from being handed out in the early years of NHL, it wasn't until 1922-23 season when the first secondary assist was awarded. On December 20th in a game between Toronto St.Patricks and Ottawa Senators, George Boucher became the first player in the history of NHL to record a secondary assist. Ottawa's fourth goal of the game reads as: Broadbent (Darragh, Boucher).

Toronto St. Patricks - Ottawa Senators (1917) - December 20th, 1922

There were only six more secondary assists awarded that season so they weren't regular occurrence at that point.

Here's the breakdown of the number of secondary assists on the early years of the league:

1917-18: 0
1918-19: 0
1919-20: 0
1920-21: 0
1921-22: 0
1922-23: 7 (Jack Adams leading the way with three secondary assists)
1923-24: 2
1924-25: 10 (Bert McCaffrey leading the way with three secondary assists while Jack Adams had two)
1925-26: 8
1926-27: 14 (Percy Galbraith leading the way with three secondary assists)
1927-28: 19 (Frank Boucher and Butch Keeling led with two secondary assists)
1928-29: 23 (Bill Cook, George Horne, Merlyn Phillips, Hap Day and Andy Blair each had two secondary assists)

Playoffs (only listing years where there was a secondary assist handed out)

1925-26: 1
1927-28: 2
1928-29: 1

- Curiously there were three secondaries awarded in one game (January 3rd, 1925 between Canadiens and St.Patricks) when there was only four goals scored in that game and overall only ten secondary assists handed out that whole season.
- Merlyn Phillips was the first player to record two secondary assists in a game (February 23rd, 1929).

As mentioned the restriction of forward passing certainly limited how the game was played and thus how well there were opportunities to get secondary assists. It's not a coincidence that when forward passing in the offensive zone was allowed for 1929-30 season, the offense increased and there were more secondary assists. The high mark of the number of secondary assists in a season was broken already before Christmas in that season.
 

DJ Man

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I remember reading, sometime during the 1960s, that the League office kept stats on how many assists were being awarded by the various cities' scorekeepers, and would apply some pressure to keep the assists per goal at consistent levels. Do they still do that?
 

alko

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Found a rule, that shall be used in 1933/1934 season (source):

  • 1933-34 - "When a goal is scored an assist shall be credited to any player taking part in the play leading up to the scoring of the goal, provided that no player from the opposing side shall have touched the puck during the course of such play."
Did it mean, that there could be a goal with first, second and third assists?
 

TheDevilMadeMe

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Yes, if you look at box scores from the 1930s, there are some goals with 3 credited assists.

However, there were still fewer assists-per-goal overall back then, as there were more goals with only 1 assist back then, compared to anything recent. There may have also been more unassisted goals back then; I'm not sure on that one.
 

tarheelhockey

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As mentioned the restriction of forward passing certainly limited how the game was played and thus how well there were opportunities to get secondary assists. It's not a coincidence that when forward passing in the offensive zone was allowed for 1929-30 season, the offense increased and there were more secondary assists. The high mark of the number of secondary assists in a season was broken already before Christmas in that season.

One of the nuances here is that offensive strategy of that era was heavily influenced by rugby, which was also in vogue at the same time hockey was developing. There was a lot of cross-pollination between the sports because so many top athletes played both games (think Lionel Conacher) and so many coaches crossed over as well.

The dynamics of a fast-moving play in rugby are similar to the dynamics of an offensive rush in the pre-forward-passing era of hockey. The idea was to gain speed, then run a play as you encountered the defense. Not necessarily a basketball-style set play, but still something fairly coordinated where ultimately a defender would have to commit himself at the exact moment the puck carrier is choosing whether to pass or cut to the net. Ultimately you're trying to flex the D enough to create a lane in between or around them.

Resulting from that approach, a lot of goals were scored on plays where the puck carrier used his teammates as decoys or screens. It was a game made up primarily of rushes back and forth, rather than the passing and cycling game that came later. The addition of forward passing shifted that dynamic to something more like lacrosse or basketball, which were also familiar points of reference for Canadian athletes (lacrosse was fading as basketball was gaining popularity). That's where you see a cleaner and more coordinated passing aspect start to emerge, with less emphasis on rushes directly to the net.

All that being said, the awarding of assists during that era appears to have been along the lines we now associate with basketball, where the referee/scorekeeper would make a judgment call as to whether one was deserved. There are tons and tons of instances where players were noted to have touched the puck in quick succession, but no assist was awarded.
 

Canadiens1958

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One of the nuances here is that offensive strategy of that era was heavily influenced by rugby, which was also in vogue at the same time hockey was developing. There was a lot of cross-pollination between the sports because so many top athletes played both games (think Lionel Conacher) and so many coaches crossed over as well.

The dynamics of a fast-moving play in rugby are similar to the dynamics of an offensive rush in the pre-forward-passing era of hockey. The idea was to gain speed, then run a play as you encountered the defense. Not necessarily a basketball-style set play, but still something fairly coordinated where ultimately a defender would have to commit himself at the exact moment the puck carrier is choosing whether to pass or cut to the net. Ultimately you're trying to flex the D enough to create a lane in between or around them.

Resulting from that approach, a lot of goals were scored on plays where the puck carrier used his teammates as decoys or screens. It was a game made up primarily of rushes back and forth, rather than the passing and cycling game that came later. The addition of forward passing shifted that dynamic to something more like lacrosse or basketball, which were also familiar points of reference for Canadian athletes (lacrosse was fading as basketball was gaining popularity). That's where you see a cleaner and more coordinated passing aspect start to emerge, with less emphasis on rushes directly to the net.

All that being said, the awarding of assists during that era appears to have been along the lines we now associate with basketball, where the referee/scorekeeper would make a judgment call as to whether one was deserved. There are tons and tons of instances where players were noted to have touched the puck in quick succession, but no assist was awarded.

Football, forward pass history.

USA, legalized in 1906:

Forward Pass - American and Canadian Football - History - First Legal Pass

Canada legalized in 1929:

Canadian football - Wikipedia

Into the O6 era, assists had to be clean, continuous and direct, could not touch opposing players, etc.
 

tarheelhockey

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This is a big deal that often flies under the radar. Both the NHL and the Canadian Rugby Union (what we now call Canadian football) legalized forward passing at the same time.

And I mean EXACTLY the same time. September 28th and September 29th, 1929. Less than 24 hours apart, the two major Canadian winter sports of the day both changed from backward-passing to forward-passing sports.

This was a fundamental conceptual shift in the Canadian concept of what sport looked like, the underlying principles of offensive and defensive strategy. The basic concept of an "assist" was necessarily altered as well.
 

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