What is Primary Assists?

The first assist on a goal—given to the player who passed it to the goal scorer.

What this tells us

When a player records a primary assist, his team just scored and he was directly involved in setting it up. Primary assists show who's creating immediate scoring chances. A player with a high assist total is regularly getting the puck to teammates in positions where they can score.

Limitations

Primary assists reward the final pass before a goal, but they don't capture all the playmaking that led to it. A player who threads a perfect pass through three defenders gets the same credit as one who makes an easy touch pass on a 5-on-1 break. That's why primary assists work best alongside expected goals (xG), which weights each shot by how dangerous it actually was — a better measure of how much real scoring a player's passes are creating.

Example

A top-line playmaker might average 0.8 to 1.2 primary assists per 60 minutes of ice time. A defensive-minded forward on the fourth line might average 0.3 to 0.5 per 60.