Primary vs Secondary Assists- 2018-19 season

[bossram]

Is there a list of secondary assist leaders who just fall off the scoring race completely the following year?

And when I mean by 'control' type players, I mean it's like the backbone of sustained offensive pressure which is often the result of having great team-mates to defer to.

It might not correlate year to year, but nobody on the secondary assist list surprises me.

They don't fall off the scoring pace because they're still good players who rack up goals and assists. The secondaries fluctuate.

 

[Beauner]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like secondary assists show types of players who are more in control of the overall play, and primary assists show more broken plays, and rushes.

I don't think you can generalize that easily. Assists come in all forms. Just in last night's NYR/Pit game there were 2 very different primary assits on goals. On Cullen's goal, Garrett Wilson got an assist just for cycling the puck. Cullen did most of the work but Wilson still gets credit. Then you had Crosby's assist where his insane vision tee'd up Schultz on the powerplay. A secondary assist by a defenseman who just flipped the puck out of the D zone compared to a secondary assists where Crosby is thinking 2 steps ahead of everyone else are not that comparable either.

Assists, primary and secondary, come in all forms.

 

[Perfect_Drug]

McDavid was among the leaders in 2As in his two Art Ross seasons.

http://www.nhl.com/stats/player?agg...ype=2&filter=gamesPlayed,gte,1&sort=assist2nd

This would seem to contradict the "better help" argument.

The reality is the best playmaking forwards tend to get the most 1As and 2As. There really isn't any thing to read into it.

Backstrom is maybe the only the statistical anomaly (a disproportionate amount of 2As) that can be explained by sharing the ice with the era's clear best goalscorer.

McDavid had significantly more help the previous 2 seasons over this one.

Draisaitl, Eberle, Lucic, Maroon, all scored over 20.
Nuge, Klefbom, and Letestu scored double digit goals

Basically 3 lines that could score with more goals coming from the defense.

 

[Midnight Judges]

There is a lot of good data on the subject:

What is the objective value of an assist?

Simplify scoring: drop the pointless secondary assist

The Second Assist: Statistic or Gift?

https://www.tsn.ca/the-noise-surrounding-secondary-assists-1.1134501

Some NHL Stars Get More Assists At Home Than They Deserve

 

[daver]

McDavid had significantly more help the previous 2 seasons over this one.

Draisaitl, Eberle, Lucic, Maroon, all scored over 20.
Nuge, Klefbom, and Letestu scored double digit goals

Basically 3 lines that could score with more goals coming from the defense.

This shouldn't affect his ratio of 1As to 2As unless they were all on the ice with him when they scored.

 

[Yackiberg8]

Primary assist might be an untintentional deflection while the secondary assist getter might have moved the puck into the o-zone, deeked a guy and made a pass through the legs of two players to the guy reflecting.

It might be but the majority of the time it isn’t.

 

[Yackiberg8]

I'm not surprised when you compare both the team rosters.

Not sure what you mean. Compare Leafs and Lightning?

 

[Perfect_Drug]

This shouldn't affect his ratio of 1As to 2As unless they were all on the ice with him when they scored.

I mean 2 years ago, what I saw was McDavid was able to quarterback sustained offensive zone pressure.

This year, they don't have any Dmen that can hold the blueline, and every player (not named Draisaitl) that won't immediately lose the puck when it's on their stick.

I don't have stat breakdowns, but I've seen every Oiler game the past 3 decades, and what I noticed this season is, that a disproportionate number of McDavids point production this year came off of rushes and broken plays.

Setting up in the offensive zone this season hasn't really yielded any goals for the Oilers. Which is why the PP is so anemic.



Maybe there's also something to be said about puck carriers, and puck movers.

 

[Dynamite Time]

Did you see Ben Bishops secondary assist last night?

 

[Beauner]

There is a lot of good data on the subject:

What is the objective value of an assist?

Simplify scoring: drop the pointless secondary assist

The Second Assist: Statistic or Gift?

https://www.tsn.ca/the-noise-surrounding-secondary-assists-1.1134501

Some NHL Stars Get More Assists At Home Than They Deserve

Those links don't get any more credible and/or true the more you post them.


Figured this would be a thread you stayed out of.

 

[Dynamite Time]

Not all secondary assist are the reason the goal is scored, however some of them are.

No problem with it.

 

[Midnight Judges]

'' CrOsBy iS ThE kInG oF SeCONdary aSsits ''

Well, facts say otherwise

This is exactly what I thought when I saw those stats. Remember “Secondary Sidney”? Good times.

These numbers still don't support the idea that Crosby's offensive production relies mostly on secondary assists, try again

Secondary Sid is secondary Sid because he has benefitted more from secondary assists than any other player in the history of the game. While not getting the most secondary assists, Sidney Crosby is the only player in the history of the game where people will claim he is the best player of his generation by virtue of secondary assists. Every time people compare Sid's PPG or raw point totals to Ovechkin's, this is precisely what they are doing. Most people don't even realize they are doing it.

Indeed Sid doesn't get the most secondary assists - that honor goes to Nick Backstrom - because secondary assists reflect more on the team around a player than the player themselves. (It's no coincidence that the 2A leader this year plays for the Lightning). In Backstrom's case, he racks up tons of secondary assists by virtue of playing with Ovechkin. Crediting Backstrom with those assist totals is no different than crediting him for the Capitals tanking and getting Ovechkin (before Backstrom joined the Capitals). In other words, completely arbitrary.

The same goes for Sidney Crosby being on Malkin's team and getting tons of ice time with Malkin to the point where Malkin factors in on 50% of secondary Sid's points in some seasons (like 2009) and 25-30% in a typical year.

That is all to say nothing of the bizarrely inconsistent way the NHL awards secondary assists that just so happens to benefit Crosby more than virtually any other player:

Some NHL Stars Get More Assists At Home Than They Deserve

 

[Midnight Judges]

Those links don't get any more credible and/or true the more you post them.

It is obvious you haven't read them, and if you did, you didn't comprehend them.

By all means, refute the points and data from the links. Go for it.

 

[Not My Tempo]

Primary assist might be an untintentional deflection while the secondary assist getter might have moved the puck into the o-zone, deeked a guy and made a pass through the legs of two players to the guy reflecting.

Idk why people always say this. Yes it’s possible that a secondary assist was more important than a primary, but it just isn’t the case over a large sample. The fact is that secondary assists depend on a primary assist and a goal in order to even be counted and if a measure of individual production is strongly dependent on other individuals, then it isn’t a good measure of the individual. It’s hard to isolate the individual impact of a secondary assist.

 

[Midnight Judges]

Not all secondary assist are the reason the goal is scored, however some of them are.

Sure, like 5% of the time.

 

[Frosty415]

Not sure what you mean. Compare Leafs and Lightning?

Not sure what you mean, that list clearly shows McDavid ahead of Kucherov in assists (at least the one I quoted)

 

[Midnight Judges]

Idk why people always say this. Yes it’s possible that a secondary assist was more important than a primary, but it just isn’t the case over a large sample. The fact is that secondary assists depend on a primary assist and a goal in order to even be counted and if a measure of individual production is strongly dependent on other individuals, then it isn’t a good measure of the individual. It’s hard to isolate the individual impact of a secondary assist.

Indeed, and what's also interesting is that when a player switches teams, there is a strong correlation from their goal totals on previous team to goals on new team. Also a strong correlation from their primary assists on previous team to primary assists on new team.

There is no such correlation for secondary assists.

This suggests that unlike goals and primary assists, secondary assists are largely not indicative of an individual player's effectiveness:

Simplify scoring: drop the pointless secondary assist

 

[SotasicA]

A goal should be 5pts, primary assist 3pts, secondary assist 2pts and tertiary assist or just being on the ice while your team scores 1pt.

And deduct a point everytime you're on the ice when the opposition scores.

 

[Dynamite Time]

Sure, like 5% of the time.

So when a defenseman, in his end, banks the puck off the boards to a teammate who takes it into the offensive zone and then passes to another teammate who puts it in the net of course the d-man had nothing to do with it.

 

[koyvoo]

A goal should be 5pts, primary assist 3pts, secondary assist 2pts and tertiary assist or just being on the ice while your team scores 1pt.

And deduct a point everytime you're on the ice when the opposition scores.

If this was the case, you’d have people (who didn’t watch them play) believing that Mike Garter was better at hockey than Ron Francis and Joe Sakic and Steve Yzerman or that Dino Ciccarelli was better than Adam Oates.

 

[Rschmitz]

It shows how he has to start almost everything, whereas Kucherov gets a lot more help from his team.

Also shows Kucherov does a better job of using the talent around him.

 

[Llamamoto]

Also shows Kucherov does a better job of using the talent around him.

What talent does McDavid have around him?

 

[Midnight Judges]

So when a defenseman, in his end, banks the puck off the boards to a teammate who takes it into the offensive zone and then passes to another teammate who puts it in the net of course the d-man had nothing to do with it.

No. That's the 5%.

Here is an article where they make the case that secondary assists are perhaps a more meaningful statistic for a defenseman than for a forward:

What is the objective value of an assist?

 

[Dynamite Time]

No. That's the 5%.

Here is an article where they make the case that secondary assists are perhaps a more meaningful statistic for a defenseman than for a forward:

What is the objective value of an assist?

Read the article and understand what it’s saying but should 2nd’ary assist not count as a point to that player; or depending if it’s a player who passes to a teammate for a shot on goal and it deflects off another teammates leg, skate, etc. it should.

 

[CanadianPensFan1]

.. and only about 15% of people care about this in order to fit whichever their favourite player is into a particular narrative.