On Tue, 10 Jan 1995, Mike Machnik wrote: > On HOCKEY-L, we have talked about the sometimes nebulous practice of > awarding assists. I noticed last night that our local paper is > running a weekly column on high school hockey complete with stats of > area teams and players. > > In response, the coach said something like, "I know those kids were > out on the ice, and I'm sure they had to have been involved in the > play somehow." We had a situation down here in high school basketball a few years ago where some kid was racking a huge assist total. I went out to cover one of the team's games and decided to keep my own assist total for the player. I had him with 8 when the game was over, while the team statistician had him with either 16 or 17. It was a situation kinda like the above, only the school was trying to get colleges interested in the player. He was a Division I prospect anyway, and did play major college basketball for 4 years. In either sport, assists are so subjective that we have never paid any attention them. Same for tackles in football. If 4 people gang tackle a player, I've known statisticians to credit everyone with 1 tackle. |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--| | Lynn Burke Newport News, Va. | |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|