NHL Average Career Assists between 1917/18 - 2005/06 Seasons

This section looks at the career assists distribution of all NHL skaters between 1917/18 - 2005/06 seasons. The data includes all forwards and defensemen who played their last regular season NHL game before or during the 2005/06 season. NHL all-time assist leaders can be viewed in the stats section. Distributions for career goals and points are analyzed on separate pages.

On each chart, the horizontal axis (x-axis) shows the number of assists and the vertical axis (y-axis) the number of players. The red columns show the number of players in each assists group. Data labels have been added to the charts where they fit comfortably.

The tables below show summary statistics for the regular season data across player positions. The average forward has 78.2 and the average defenseman 63.34 assists during their careers. Wayne Gretzky and Ray Bourque hold the career records for the number of assists for forwards and defensemen respectively.

The charts below show how career assists are distributed between all skaters as well as forwards and defensemen separately. Each chart groups the number of assists into 25 assist buckets and shows the number of players that fall into each bucket. The first bucket (zero assists) is an exception as it shows the number of players who weren't credited any assists during their careers.

As suggested by the medians above, the distributions are highly skewed to the left. This makes it difficult to see the shape of the distribution for players with more than 25 assist during their careers. To overcome this problem the distributions are broken down to two parts - Left Tail and Right Tail - which show the distributions for low scoring careers (25 assists or less) and high scoring careers (over 25 assists) respectively.

Click on the buttons below to move between the player positions or to switch between the full distribution and the tails.

Finally, the table below shows the percentages of NHL players who have been credited with different number of assists during their careers. For example, 18.33% of forwards don't get a single assist during their careers and 39.25% get between 1 and 25 assists. The data in the table is also displayed in the chart below for forwards and defense.

The tables below show summary statistics for the playoffs data across player positions. The average NHL player has only 5.33 post season assists during his career. Median is zero for both forwards and defense, which means that over 50% of NHL players finish their careers without a single playoff assist.

The charts below break down the playoff assists into 10 assist intervals. Similarly to regular season charts, I have split the distributions in two to make the distribution shapes for both low scoring (20 assists or less) and high scoring (over 20 assists) careers more apparent.

Click on the buttons below to move between the player positions or to switch between the full distribution and the tails.

Finally, the table below shows the percentages of NHL players who are credited with different number of assists during their playoff careers. For example, 59.72% of NHL players don't get a single assist during their playoff careers and 25.98% get between 1 and 10 assists. The data in the table is also displayed in the chart below for forwards and defense.

QuantHockey: NHL All-Time Assist Leaders

QuantHockey: Most Assists in One Season

The data set does not include any players who have played in the league after 2005/06 season. They are excluded because we only want to include skaters whose NHL careers are over. There is no doubt that some skaters who haven't played in the league since 2005/06 will still return, but their number is likely to be sufficiently small not to obscure the analysis.

At present, skaters who have appeared in playoffs only are not included in the data set. This only affects the distribution for playoff career assists.