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Why does Hockey combine Goals and Assists together?

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tenken00

tenken00

Oh it's going down in Chinatown
Jan 29, 2010
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I wrote this earlier on the Caps board and genuinely would really like to know.

Forget about goals and assists being of equal value or primary and secondary assists or whatever.

Why even combine goals and assists together in the first place? It just seems so counterintuitive if you take a step back from it all. No other sport in the world does that.

I understand that "its always been done this way", but does it make sense? You can get up to 3 points off of just one score. Why not just give the goal scorer a goal, and the people who assisted an assist, and that's that? You know exactly what they did - simple.

Basketball stats go 20 pts 6 assists 10 rebounds 3 blocks. You dont add them all together.

And you dont begrudge Michael Jordan because he doesn't have Magic Johnson's assist totals because of it. Its just... different. Different stats.

Soccer you go 3 goals 1 assist. You dont combine them. If you do, goals are worth 2 points and assists are worth 1 ( like MLS tried to do a point system once but abandoned it ). No other soccer league has even thought of combining.

I'm not saying it's a bad system.. but like.. why even do it?
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assists are kind of rare, relatively, in soccer. Most goals are unassisted, its kind of subjective when a pass is deemed worthy of an assist in that it "Directly led to the scoring chance". In hockey, the goalie could have farted on the puck behind his own net and the forward picks it up and goes coast to coast for a goal and the goalie still gets the assist.
 
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Smart Alek said:
You anticipated the answer of "it's always been done this way", and I'd add that there's no compelling reason to change it now. We do count goals and assists individually as well; putting them together for 'points' just gives us a nice number that approximates offensive contribution.
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But then you run into the problem of trying to determine valuation. No other sport has that problem.
 
tenken00 said:
I wrote this earlier on the Caps board and genuinely would really like to know.

Forget about goals and assists being of equal value or primary and secondary assists or whatever.

Why even combine goals and assists together in the first place? It just seems so counterintuitive if you take a step back from it all. No other sport in the world does that.

I understand that "its always been done this way", but does it make sense? You can get up to 3 points off of just one score. Why not just give the goal scorer a goal, and the people who assisted an assist, and that's that? You know exactly what they did - simple.

Basketball stats go 20 pts 6 assists 10 rebounds 3 blocks. You dont add them all together.

And you dont begrudge Michael Jordan because he doesn't have Magic Johnson's assist totals because of it. Its just... different. Different stats.

Soccer you go 3 goals 1 assist. You dont combine them. If you do, goals are worth 2 points and assists are worth 1 ( like MLS tried to do a point system once but abandoned it ). No other soccer league has even thought of combining.

I'm not saying it's a bad system.. but like.. why even do it?
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People would just end up adding them together to compare players regardless if they weren't called points.
 
tenken00 said:
Basketball stats go 20 pts 6 assists 10 rebounds 3 blocks. You dont add them all together.
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Of those 20 Points. How many were Free Throws? Dunks? Buckets? From 3-point land?

Why do they add up the buckets like that? What if a guy made 20 free throws? Or 7 three-pointers? There is clearly a difference in what they are.

Why not just have 3 single, 4 double, 3 triple, 6 assists, 10 rebounds, 3 blocks?
 
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JerseyMike34 said:
Of those 20 Points. How many were Free Throws? Dunks? Buckets? From 3-point land?

Why do they add up the buckets like that? What if a guy made 20 free throws? Or 7 three-pointers? There is clearly a difference in what they are.

Why not just have 3 single, 4 double, 3 triple, 6 assists, 10 rebounds, 3 blocks?
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Well they do have 3 PT stats and FT stats, right?
 
tenken00 said:
Well they do have 3 PT stats and FT stats, right?
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The NHL has Powerplay Goals, Shorthanded Goals, Game Winning Goals. All of those are worth 1 goal. The points vary by bucket in the NBA, shouldn't they differentiate on a stat line?

The NFL has Running yards and passing yards. They add them up and call them All Purpose Yards.
Hell! The NFL gives a Touchdown for the QB and whoever crosses the goal line! They hand out 2 touchdowns for 1 actual touchdown!

Don't even get me started on MLB stats. Damn.
 
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Baseball adds OBP & SLG together and calls it OPS.

Many stats include other stats within them. Shots includes goals, for example.
 
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Smart Alek said:
This isn't a problem for the vast majority of hockey fans. And for that sliver which does obsess over such minutiae, it gives them something to talk about.
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True, but isnt points total the end all be all premier stat that people go by? It's like the 3 point regular season games with the loser point added on. Why give out 3 points for one score and not just separate the stats into different categories of all the contributions?

Its just.. weird
 
I'm not sure what you're getting at tbh. Points are just a post hoc sum.

You can get up to 3 points off of just one score. Why not just give the goal scorer a goal, and the people who assisted an assist, and that's that?
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But that's exactly what they do. You cannot be awarded a point in absence of a goal or an assist. I'm confused, are you asking why goals and assists both have 1:1 point value ratios?
 
I don't know, but when I look at the leading scorers in the any hockey league, the top point getters are usually the best offensive players. So the stat does it's job - it tells you who is creating offense. If you want to dig deeper, the breakdown is there too.
 
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Why is it an issue? Points are not a definitive measure of anything other than who had most goals and assists combined. If you need to gauge players' performance or what they'd bring to a team, you'll consider other factors, too.
 
7even said:
I'm not sure what you're getting at tbh. Points are just a post hoc sum.



But that's exactly what they do. You cannot be awarded a point in absence of a goal or an assist. I'm confused, are you asking why goals and assists both have 1:1 point value ratios?
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Well, more like no other sport needs to argue if goal to assist ratios even need to be of 1:1 because they are just thought of as separate. Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan were both great players. They excelled in different things. And yet you can still have discussions about who was greater. They just go about it in a different way.
 
tenken00 said:
But then you run into the problem of trying to determine valuation. No other sport has that problem.
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A 30g 50pt scorer and a 10g 50pt scorer will be paid differently. The value of the statistics are outsourced to the market. Every sport identifies which statistics they value most by paying unequally for all the dimensions a player can be evaluated across. There's no ontological difference between a goal and a blocked shot on the powerplay with the empty net while down one -- they're both events. The value of one metric over another is determined collectively.
 
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7even said:
A 30g 50pt scorer and a 10g 50pt scorer will be paid differently. The value of the statistics are outsourced to the market. Every sport identifies which statistics they value most by paying unequally for all the dimensions a player can be evaluated across. There's no ontological difference between a goal and a blocked shot on the powerplay with the empty net while down one -- they're both events. The value of one metric or another is determined collectively.
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But would still be ranked similar according to the Art Ross. Or looking at historical points total.
 
Without reading through the various responses, i am not sure why the question was asked, but as i was taught in order to score a goal there needs to be support/assists from your team mates. Its all part of the scoring process and thus equal in weighting. It’s a team game, its not f***ing bocce ball. That’s why.
 
Hynh said:
Because it works. Lemieux didn't lead the league in goals or assists in 1992-93 (finishing 3rd and 4th respectively) but he was clearly the best forward as revealed by his point total.
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But other sports you can tell who the best player is irregardless if they aren't top of every stat.
 
Each goal is worth 1 point total, 0.50 to the scorer and 0.25 to each of the two people who assisted.

If there is only one assist, the scorer gets 0.50 and the assister gets 0.25 and a panel of celebrity judges picked each season (headed by Gordon Ramsay) will determine who gets the remaining 0.25 of a point
 
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