Anyone else feel you cant just analyze secondary assists at face value?

[WarriorofTime]

It definitely is not.

Probably the first thing scouts look at and that fans get wrong.

 

[kerrabria]

Probably the first thing scouts look at and that fans get wrong.

Probably why half the dmen drafted high nowadays are busts.

And look at the top pair Dmen on Stanley Cup champs over the past few years. How many have been defensive liabilities but great puck movers (bonus points if they aren’t goal scorers).

 

[Fitzy]

I've been arguing second assists should often be awarded on good intentional screens, as those often impact a goal more than secondar yassists and sometimes even primary ones.

Kreider would have like 15 more a season.

 

[Pablo El Perro]

Some secondary assists make the play. Some primary assists are a player bobbling a puck. Some goals just bounce off a players ass. Context matters.

 

[TheDawnOfANewTage]

Some secondary assists make the play. Some primary assists are a player bobbling a puck. Some goals just bounce off a players ass. Context matters.

Sometimes a dude stops a goal from happening at one end, and then he makes the key 3rd pass that leads to his team scoring. That’s a 2 point swing, but it might not get any points.

I think you could have some fun with statistics there, but I think the system mostly sums up the players who contribute the most to the offense.

 

[Pablo El Perro]

Sometimes a dude stops a goal from happening at one end, and then he makes the key 3rd pass that leads to his team scoring. That’s a 2 point swing, but it might not get any points.

I think you could have some fun with statistics there, but I think the system mostly sums up the players who contribute the most to the offense.

Yeah,I think downplaying this or that point is for nerds. And I'm good at maths.

 

[crazy8888]

The argument many people make is secondary assists are a lot less meaningful and showcase less skill than primary points. But imho, I think you have to specifically watch every goal to determine whether or not the secondary assist was the weaker point.

If a player briefly touched the puck while the primary point producers did everything else, then yeah the secondary assist was irrelevant. However, if the secondary assist happened due to one player keeping the puck in the zone along with excellent shielding and drawing players toward him, then dishing off an excellent pass, which results into a shot, and finally a rebound tip/deflection for a goal, then the secondary assist producer clearly did the bulk work and was the most important player in that sequence.

I do think for wingers secondary assists are more likely to not be as impactful. But for centres and especially defenseman, secondary assists can be just as important if not more than primary once you watch and analyze how the goal was created.

Not that your wrong or anything but secondary assists are really only brought up by fans in arguments about players they do not like. Their pettiness will always outweigh your logic.

 

[CycloneSweep]

Yes but it is 90% of the time harder to score a goal than getting a secondary assist. There may be some outliner secondary assist where this person beat a whole team and do a spinorama to someone who pass to someone who score. But 90% of the cases it isnt that.

Is it? A goal still needs to be scored.

 

[Jumptheshark]

once upon a time--there was no secondary assist

 

[NotCommitted]

Of course there's a lot of variance on the importance of the secondary assist on a goal and sometimes it might be the more important one, but on average that's not the case. Also while they might not be as important on average as primary assists, if someone keeps racking them up over a large sample size that tells you plays go through them a lot. I think the further away you get from the goal, which is the end result, the more important context becomes. Sometimes even a "3rd assist" can be really important but it's so far removed from the goal, on average handing them out would be silly and you'll just have to settle for the on-ice GF.

Btw. I'm too lazy to confirm this right now, but I think back in the 80s or something when I started watching hockey, they awarded 2nd assists on a case by case basis at least in IIHF international games. Would be interesting to hear if someone knows for sure? It was a long time ago and I was quite young back then. It could also be they were just delayed from someone reviewing the play and seeing if there was a 2nd assist, but not actually judging it by any criteria.

 

[pi314]

The argument against secondary assists universally comes from fans of Auston Matthews or Alex Ovechkin.

It’s so transparent.

They just want to prop up their favorite player.

Hockey goals happen from plays.

Often the least important player on a goal is the goal scorer.

This is especially true in empty net situations.

Where the real work is winning a puck battle with 1 less guy.

There is a reason guys like McDavid get a lot of secondary assists.

They make plays.

 

[666]

The argument many people make is secondary assists are a lot less meaningful and showcase less skill than primary points.

There are about 7 goals scored per game. Each scoring play probably lasts about 15 seconds. Analysing anything based on these 105 seconds of a hockey game is a bad idea.

 

[ijuka]

There's a strong correlation between secondary assists, and the puck going into the net:

Here's some secondary assist leaders (From Reddit, not sure how official):
View attachment 930614

There is correlation, but it's far weaker than that of primary assists or goals. You using "strong correlation" is completely meaningless. It's strong in comparison to blocked shots, or something. It is NOT strong in comparison to goals, primary assists, expected goals, etc.

And the measure I use is: [A player's past games' secondary assists as predictors for team goals in the current game]. I don't know which measure you use, but considering you're quoting completely irrelevant statistics that will never reach the sample size of hundreds of thousands of samples of the analysis I performed, I'll just assume you have no clue about what you're talking about.

 

[tucker3434]

I think it’s a reasonable tiebreaker (same with goals) but overall, there’s a reason great players load up on secondary assists. It’s no accident.

 

[WarriorofTime]

I think it’s a reasonable tiebreaker (same with goals) but overall, there’s a reason great players load up on secondary assists. It’s no accident.

Defensemen tend to get the highest share of points via second assists and it is indeed no accident and a function of them being less directly involved in a lot of the goals they get points on.

 

[Signupnow]

The only answer to this is: it depends.

I wouldn’t be able to carry the puck and make plays, but I could just be standing by the net and a puck could hit me and go into the net.

For players, I think it all evens out at the end. Sometimes they’ll get « easy » points and other times they won’t even get a point after a big play.

Ah, I see! If we're talking about a normal person who doesn't play hockey, the likelihood of them scoring a goal or earning a secondary assist in the NHL is practically zero for both. However, if we assume they somehow participate in an NHL game, the odds of a secondary assist versus a goal depend on how easy it is for a non-player to contribute to these outcomes.

Comparison

Scoring a goal: This requires significant skill in skating, positioning, and shooting. A non-hockey player would struggle immensely to achieve this.

Earning a secondary assist: This only requires being the second-to-last player to touch the puck before a goal is scored. It could happen by accident, like deflecting a pass.


Conclusion

In this highly unlikely scenario:

A non-hockey player is much more likely to get a secondary assist than score a goal, potentially hundreds of times more likely.

Expressed as a percentage, if the chance of scoring a goal is effectively 0.001%, the chance of getting a secondary assist might be around 0.1%, making it about 10,000% more likely to earn a secondary assist than score a goal.


I think ai is a better guesstimate than you.

As for NHL players.

To calculate the likelihood of an NHL player recording a secondary assist compared to scoring a goal, we can use the typical breakdown of goals and assists in the NHL.

Key Assumptions

1. Goals vs. Assists in the NHL:

In a typical season, there are approximately 2 assists per goal, split between primary and secondary assists.

Primary assists are more common than secondary assists, with secondary assists making up roughly 40-45% of all assists.



2. Breakdown:

For every 1 goal scored, there are roughly:

1 primary assist and 0.8 secondary assists.






---

Likelihood Ratio

This means an NHL player is about 0.8 secondary assists for every goal.

To express this as a percentage likelihood:

(0.8 secondary assists / 1 goal) × 100 = 80%.




---

Conclusion

An NHL player is approximately 80% as likely to record a secondary assist as they are to score a goal.

 

[Regal]

The argument against secondary assists universally comes from fans of Auston Matthews or Alex Ovechkin.

It’s so transparent.

They just want to prop up their favorite player.

Hockey goals happen from plays.

Often the least important player on a goal is the goal scorer.

This is especially true in empty net situations.

Where the real work is winning a puck battle with 1 less guy.

There is a reason guys like McDavid get a lot of secondary assists.

They make plays.

Yea, I often feel that the arguments against it are working backwards. They start from the idea that it isn’t valuable and try to rationalize why that’s the case. The main argument I’ve seen is based on studies that secondary assists have greater fluctuation year to year, and if they were a “skill”, there would be less variance, but these never seem to focus on high end forwards. Certainly most defensemen and complementary forwards are more reliant on the skill of those around them to finish their plays in order to get secondary assists, but for elite players I think it’s a lot more about carrying the play and giving opportunities for others that can lead to goals. A mid-pair defenseman playing on a high scoring team might have a year where his breakout passes end up leading to goals at an unusually high rate. But that’s not the same as an elite offensive defenseman who constantly pushes possession so that the team has many more scoring chances and he gets secondaries as a result.

 

[qc14]

While I generally agree, you can make the same argument about primary assists. There's a big difference between a cross-slot pass giving someone a wide open net to tap in vs. dropping the puck behind the net on a controlled breakout and the other guy goes end-to-end and scores. You can take it even further and say the same thing about goals -- we count a lucky bounce of of someones shin in front of the net the same as a snipe from the top of the circles. The point of stats is that it's impossible to exactly recreate every single moment that goes into a single play, let alone an entire game or season, so you need to find ways to approximate and quantify aspects of the game.

While not all secondary assists are created equal, at an aggregate level I don't think it's particularly controversial to say that secondary assists generally are less directly related to scoring a goal than primary assists, which are less directly related to the goal than the shot itself. If two players have 50 assists and one has a 30/20 primary/secondary split while the other has a 15/35 split, I feel comfortable saying the first player has a more direct hand in creating goals.

Just like EV vs PP point production, it shouldn't be used in a vacuum or used as a club to beat players with. It's definitely better to have a secondary assist than nothing! That being said, it's a very useful stat to help take away some of the noise and put goals and assists on a more even playing field.