OTF Classic

So sayeth the Muse, " it takes two to make a thing go right." In the NHL, that translates to elite scorers who rely upon particular playmakers to set them up. Which elite snipers are most reliant on particular linemates? Let's take a look inside the numbers from the 2006-7 NHL regular season. The following is a list of those prominent goal scorers (anyone with 20 or more goals last season) in order of their reliance on a particular teammate for the 1st assist on their goals. In other words, what portion of their total goals came directly after a specific teammate played the puck? May I have the envelope please... Top 30 Goal-Scorers Ranked by Reliance Scorer Goals Top 1st Assist Man Assists Pct Daniel Sedin, VAN 36 Henrik Sedin, VAN 20 55.6% Slava Kozlov, ATL 28 Marian Hossa, ATL 15 53.6% Jason Pominville, BUF 34 Daniel Briere, BUF 17 50.0% Chris Kunitz, ANA 25 Teemu Selanne, ANA 12 48.0% Milan Michalek, SJS 26 Joe Thornton, SJS 12 ...

Sonny and Cher . Hulk Hogan and Mr. T . Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul . History is abundant with ground-breaking partners that together wrought far greater achievements than either could have dreamed of on their own. In the NHL, such pairings can carry a team through long stretches by carrying the offensive burden on their combined shoulders. During the 1990's, we saw unstoppable combos such as Mario Lemieux/Jaromir Jagr from the Penguins, Teemu Selanne/Paul Kariya with the erstwhile "Mighty" Ducks, and of course Adam Oates/Brett Hull from the St. Louis Blues. But who are today's most dynamic duos? My guideline here is to look for players providing the first assist on each others' goals. For example, our top pair, Martin St. Louis and Vincent Lecavalier of the Tampa Bay Lightning, have eighteen such scores. St. Louis has talled 12 goals where Lecavalier has recorded the first assist, while St. Louis has repaid the favor to Lecavalier six times. Top First-Assist Co...

Following up on my recent piece on Unassisted Goals , Brian from New York City wrote, Just an idea about the no assist goals in the NHL...it seems to me that many of them tend to be short-handed goals, as many of the leaders seem to be leading short-handed goal scorers. Wonder if you could breakdown that percentage? Why certainly, Brian, thanks for pointing out an angle of that story that I probably should have covered in the initial piece. At an overall level, the non-empty net, non-penalty shots goals broke down as follows: Basically, Solo Goals are indeed a much bigger slice of overall shorthanded goals than they are of even strength goals, but even strength still accounts for almost 75% of all unassisted scores. Thanks for the question, Brian!

After having recently looked at the NHL's leading assist makers , in an attempt to weed out those players loading up on 2nd Assists, I thought I'd take a look at the opposite end of the scoring formula. How often are Unassisted Goals scored, and which players get the most and least unassisted tallies? On an individual level, that could help us see who can create (and capitalize on) their own offensive chances, while on a team level, it might give us some insight into offensive style. For instance, a low-scoring team with a high proportion of "Solo Goals" might have goal-scoring talent on the roster, but not enough playmaking ability to set them up more often. Somewhat surprisingly, when we look back at the 2005-06 season, only 4.8% of non-empty net, non-penalty shot goals were scored without an assist. In terms of overall results, Eric Staal of the Carolina Hurricanes led the league with 6 such markers: Unassisted Goal Leaders 2005-06 Player Total Goals Unassisted Por...