daver
Registered User
Any good sources of info of how the hockey assist has evolved into what it is today?
Thanks
Thanks
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 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.
You could be right. I haven't been able to support my contention yet.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.
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.
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.