Primary & Secondary Assists at EV, 2007-08

by Jonathan Willis on Apr 11, 2008 8:13 AM MDT

One of the statistics often taken for granted in the National Hockey League is the assist. However, the assist is actually two distinct statistics; primary assists and secondary assists.

Among the offensive stats that Behind The Net breaks down is the assist. Taking that data, (in primary assists/60 mins and secondary assists/60 mins), I've converted it to a percentage. As follows are the Edmonton Oilers forwards ranked by what percentage of their assists at even strength are primary (the assist that sets up the goal).

Ethan Moreau - 1.00

Ales Hemsky - .823
Kyle Brodziak - .804

Sam Gagner - .738

Zach Stortini - .626

Robert Nilsson - .625

Raffi Torres - .603

Marc Pouliot - .597

Marty Reasoner - .548

Shawn Horcoff - .500

Andrew Cogliano - .500

Curtis Glencross - .416

Jarret Stoll - .382

Geoff Sanderson - .375

Fernando Pisani - .370

Dustin Penner - .369

What does this mean, you ask? I don't think it's coincidental that the top offensive players on the team are bunched up at the top. Hemsky, Gagner and Nilsson are all getting assists of the primary kind at least 62% of the time. Keeping in mind too that there are more primary assists to get (given that often a second assist is not awarded), I think .500 has to be considered not the median, but somewhere south of that.

Rather than drawing the negatives out of this list (feel free to if you'd like), I think it indicates that Gagner and Nilsson in particular are creating much of the offense, and also that Brodziak is probably more of an offensive creator than I've ever given him credit for.

Fine, one negative: look who's sitting at the bottom of the list.

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	GP	W	L	OTL	PT
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