Primary Assists? - Are old boxscores reliable enough to glean this info?

[tinyzombies]

Hmm?

Click to read more...

 

[morehockeystats]

Why not?

 

[tarheelhockey]

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

 

[joe dirte]

Hmm?

to my knowledge they've never changed how they record assists. So yes I would say it would be no better or worse than now.

 

[tinyzombies]

Does this resource exist?

 

[Bear of Bad News]

Does this resource exist?

I'm not sure what you're asking exactly, but NHL.com has online boxscores back to the start of the league.

 

[93LEAFS]

I doubt it is accurate enough. Only way to test would be to find the boxscores for 80's games and then watch them to verify over quite a few games. If you start seeing alarming errors within your first 5, you'll probably see if there is any value in watching anymore to see what the margin of error is.

 

[morehockeystats]

I doubt it is accurate enough. Only way to test would be to find the boxscores for 80's games and then watch them to verify over quite a few games. If you start seeing alarming errors within your first 5, you'll probably see if there is any value in watching anymore to see what the margin of error is.

One idea is to use the invaluable site flyershistory.com which has the independently set boxscores (I think the maintainer has used newspapers to construct them) and compare NHL.com and his data.

 

[Doctor No]

One idea is to use the invaluable site flyershistory.com which has the independently set boxscores (I think the maintainer has used newspapers to construct them) and compare NHL.com and his data.

We used a combination of newspapers and The Sporting News / The Hockey News archives. Back when we did this all, the number of newspaper archives online was probably in the single digits. We actually received CD-ROMs with each season's TSN scans on them (just the pages with the box summaries, not the entire issues).

 

[canuck2010]

Hmm?

Boxscores in hockey are relatively new as far as I know. An American influence on the game based on the baseball boxscore I think. In Canada a scoring summary showed the goal scorer first and then players that drew assists, pretty sure that what is now called the primary assist was listed first.

 

[tinyzombies]

Dick Irvin was pressed into being a scorekeeper at the Forum in the 50s, he would know.

 

[tinyzombies]

I did find this: 100 Primary Points

 

[overpass]

@matnor posted primary and secondary assist data from boxscores here almost 10 years ago. Unfortunately the tables are gone.

HSP Data: Primary and secondary assists

 

[member 83027]

I will just speak in regards to the numbers for the St Louis Blues. Overall I would say they were about 92% accurate. I had pulled the data from the flyers history data and then @morehockeystats helped with with the data from NHL.com.

Newspaper box scores had typos, wrong info, lack of scoring changes and sometimes not complete info in them. Of course human error played a part in recording the data fro flyers history as well (which is 100% completely understandable). All in all it was a fabulous resource (and still pretty good) but if you want the official record stick with NHL.com (although I don;t always agree with them).

 

[Dingo]

I might be off on what is being asked, but

I would think that human error regarding primary assists is probably very, very low. Low enough that I personally wouldnt worry about it.

Secondary assists, on the other hand, are messed up a lot just from games I have watched.... ever since I could rewind and watch the play again on my tv, its become even more clear.

I would trust old boxscores for primary assists.

 

[Doctor No]

Does your definition of "messed up" entail (1) the official scorer incorrectly assigned the secondary assist, (2) the wrong secondary assister was written down and/or transcribed into the sources, or both?

 

[tinyzombies]

I might be off on what is being asked, but

I would think that human error regarding primary assists is probably very, very low. Low enough that I personally wouldnt worry about it.

Secondary assists, on the other hand, are messed up a lot just from games I have watched.... ever since I could rewind and watch the play again on my tv, its become even more clear.

I would trust old boxscores for primary assists.

Dick Irvin was the scorekeeper at the Forum in his younger days and he said the Habs (Harvey esp) would get on the phone from downstairs during the game and tell him to add secondary assists lol. Then again, when I played in my little leagues I always felt they missed assists so... Harvey would call for other players, not just for himself.