Hockey fans and analysts have always appreciated the importance of passing. But until the passing project led by Ryan Stimson, we couldn’t quantify that importance. His work supported by a team of volunteers and other analysts has established that the passing sequence prior to a shot is a significant predictor of the likelihood of the shot becoming a goal. His work also showed that measuring shots and shot assists combined as shot contributions is a better predictor of future performance for both players and teams than shots alone.
Knowing that, the logical next step is to use passing data in analysis whenever possible. Unfortunately, the NHL does not provide passing data so it must be manually tracked by people like Corey Sznajder. Corey’s work is invaluable and I encourage you to support him but he’s only one person.
This article attempts to estimate a player’s quantity of shot assists in a given sample using publicly available data to help fill in gaps where tracked data doesn’t exist.
Hockey Graphs 