Statistical Changes We'd Like To See

Maybe we just don't know the right places to look, but our main source of statistics beyond the norm is NHL.com. While it keeps track of important stuff, one has to go find the important stuff.

Faceoff Percentage should be listed with every player

Faceoff percentage is an important statistic - it's been kept track of for a long time - why is it not one of hockey's basic stats? Because defensemen don't take faceoffs?

Time on Ice should be listed with every player

Thankfully, hockey-reference has begun to do this. Not listing time on ice is like not listing at-bats in baseball. How can we know how good a player is if we don't know how much he plays?

Assists should be broken down into primary, secondary, power play, even strength

We don't pretend to know the value of a primary assist versus a secondary, or a power play assist versus an even strength one. We do suspect that many secondary assists on the power play are not of paramount importance.

Penalties in Minutes should be broken down into major and minor

To make another terrible baseball analogy, having PIMs done the way it is done is like just having hits without singles, doubles, triples, etc. A game misconduct to a fringe player is probably not as detrimental as a single minor penalty, yet one is listed as far more penalty minutes than the other.

We don't expect to see these changes soon, and at least NHL.com has most of these statistics readily available - it just takes some digging.