Quantifying playmaking ability in hockey

Abstract: It is often said that a sign of a great player is that he makes the players around him better. The player may or may not score much himself, but his teammates perform better when he plays. One way a hockey player can improve his or her teammates' performance is to create goal scoring opportunities. Unfortunately, in hockey goal scoring is relatively infrequent, and statistics like assists can be unreliable as a measure of a player's playmaking ability. Assists also depend on playing time, power play usage, the strength of a player's linemates, and other factors. In this paper we develop a metric for quantifying playmaking ability that addresses these issues. Our playmaking metric has two benefits over assists for which we can provide statistical evidence: it is more consistent than assists, and it is better than assists at predicting future assists. Quantifying player contributions using this measure can assist decision-makers in identifying, acquiring, and integrating successful playmakers into their lineups.