Sorry, I was mistaken. Cooke is actually the worst this year with Malkin right behind. I forgot I restricted it to people with at least 1.8 even strength points per 60 minutes (i.e., top 6 level forward).

To answer your question, no, this is new. From 2007-2008 on (that’s all we have for stats), his A1 was higher than his A2.

I wasn’t offended, don’t worry.

I realize the game has to prioritize fixing the concussion issue, but those of us not involved in that process can only talk about it so much before we grow weary of the subject. Your comment just reminded me of the people who, when I might express displeasure with being hungry before lunch time, yell at me because there are starving kids in Africa who would love to have my problems.

Yeah, nobody ever said someone that has lots of A2’s isn’t talented, just that he’s fortunate to play with people who can score.

yeah, i thought his r squared #s were low, too, but that the # for goals scored was useful as a baseline/for comparison purposes

Player Yr A1 A2
Crosby 08 1.49 .47
Crosby 09 1.31 .53
Crosby 10 1.14 .59
Crosby 11 1.36 .68

H.Sedin 08 1.11 .58
H.Sedin 09 1.10 .84
H.Sedin 10 1.53 1.34
H.Sedin 11 1.57 .84

I’m not sure what it’s telling me. I think it’s best to look at Henrik’s figures. He has had pretty consistent linemates. Usually his twin and Burrows (when healthy)

Looking at 09-10 (his MVP year) and 10-11 (current year) his A1 is nearly identical, but there’s a much smaller % of secondary assists this year. He’s still 3rd in scoring, but maybe he would be first if he had more “luck” this year.

Is that even right? I don’t know. What do you guys/gals see?

I can finally join the discussion now. Here’s how I would respond to your concerns:

I get his quote, but I don’t see it as luck driven though. I see it as tough to break down- if you’re a forward and on the ice for a team goal for at even strength, there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to end up with an assist on it, simply due to puck movement in today’s game.

Don’t call it luck if you don’t like that term — I’m using it here as a catch-all for anything that isn’t the player’s individual talent, which obviously isn’t what most people think of when they hear “luck”. But “you end up with assists on most goals just because that’s how things end up with modern puck movement” doesn’t sound to me like you passionately believe that most secondary assists are the result of a player’s individual talent.

From year to year not many players are in the same line, playing the same amount of minutes against similar competition in similar roles. IMO that can account for a lot of the fluctuation.

Amount of minutes won’t matter, since we’re looking at rate stats. Quality of competition and teammates will matter, which is why I compared to goals and primary assists — if all three numbers were equally under the control of the individual player, then you’d expect the same year-over-year correlation. Since secondary assists change more from year to year, that suggests that they are more dependent on situation and luck than primary assists or goals (and less dependent on a player’s skill).

Further, his r squared numbers for goals and primary assists (while higher than the 2nd assists) didn’t really show all that much correlation to be significant, IMO.

The correlations are indeed low, because goal scoring fluctuates quite a bit from year to year (mostly due to shooting percentage luck) — just look at Ovechkin (averaged 60 per 82 games over the last three years, has 28 this year) or Kovalchuk (averaged 48 since the lockout, has 25 this year) or Heatley (averaged 45 since the lockout, has 22 this year). But when you say the correlation isn’t significant, I’m not sure what you’re getting at — do you think goal scoring isn’t a talent either?

My guess (and I haven’t even looked at the numbers) is that playmakers like Thornton, Sedin, Crosby, Richards, Savard, etc probably have fairly high and consistent rates of secondary assists.

Thornton: 0.58, 0.55, 0.78, 0.18 the last four years. Average of 0.52.
HSedin: 0.58, 0.84, 1.34, 0.84. Average of 0.9.
DSedin: 0.54, 0.59, 0.91, 1.18. Average of 0.8.
Crosby: 0.47, 0.53, 0.59, 0.68. Average of 0.57.
Richards: 0.52, 0.27, 0.36, 0.53. Average of 0.42.
Savard: 0.66, 0.75, 0.32, 0.30. Average of 0.51.
So your list of six playmakes…four of them, including Crosby, are right near league average over a four-year span, and three of them have had stretches of being well below league average. That doesn’t suggest to me that this is a good indicator of playmaking ability. And all of them except Crosby had a 2x difference between their high and low, which doesn’t suggest that it’s consistent either.

I agree with the suggestion below that a lot of it has to do with the offensive skill of your linemates. That’s sort of the point, though — if the individual player has significant control over his goals and primary assists but secondary assists depend almost completely on the skill of his teammates, then lumping secondary assists into the point total just makes it harder for us to judge the player’s individual performance. There are other (better) metrics if we want to know how he was used.

Are you one of them?