Everyone will be happy to hear that since last week's article was posted about Winnipeg (recommending folks hold on to Winnipeg players) they have put up 16 goals in three games and there are now only three cold streaks listed in their player profiles. The only real cold streak of note is Josh Morrissey. We won't be diving into Winnipeg again this week though, I just hope the weekend was some vindication to anyone who held on.

This week we turn our collective attentions to assists. On the score sheet, all assists are great. In my fantasy matchups I will take them all. In terms of repeatability and predictiveness though they definitely aren't. The odd one out is secondary assists. They can vary quite wildly over smaller sample sizes, even samples as large as a season. The reason for this is pretty straightforward. That assist requires two other individuals to execute the play and there is a lot of randomness at work there. A player can make a great pass only to have the next player in line mess it up, or in an opposite situation they make the breakout pass, get off the ice and the next two in line make the magic happen.

As a quick example, let's take Connor McDavid. If it were possible to be good at secondary assists you would think that a generational talent like McDavid would be the one to do it. His secondary assist rate still varies very significantly. In this case we are looking at the percent of his assists that are secondary versus primary.

This also means the total secondary assists McDavid can count on each year varies. So far his range is from 28 to 45 for a full season. Now for McDavid 17 secondary assists can be the difference between a 130-point pace and a 113-point pace – both still elite. But for others it can be the difference of whether or not they are even rosterable in a fantasy league.

Thomas Chabot has had some wild fluctuations in his secondary assist numbers. His 29 secondary assists (for 71 percent of his total assists in 2018-19) is incredibly high. Just as an aside – the eight for 20-21 is a little misleading as the games played numbers are significantly lower than previous years.

Give him those 13 assists back in 19-20 and he is scoring at a 58-point pace. Correct his shooting percentage and he matches the 18-19 season. The moral of this story is that for Chabot we shouldn't have expected the assist rate to continue after 2018-19, but there are also some indications that his assist rate in 20-21 was too low.

So with the implications out of the way – what does the data look like so far this season?

Hello hot streaks.

Alex Ovechkin, Seth Jones, Shayne Gostisbehere, Ryan Johansen, Moritz Seider, Anze Kopitar, Timo Meier, Troy Terry – all have had very surprising runs thus far and, surprise surprise, are all seeing inflated secondary assist percentages. In all fairness folks running in the 50s aren't running at hugely inflated levels, but it is still something to keep in mind.

Oh sorry – this table is sorted by secondary assist total with a cut off of 50 percent coming of assists coming from secondary assists (Just below that cutoff is Ryan Getzlaf in case anyone was wondering about his hot start).

Most of the players on this list are likely scoring somewhat unsustainably so generally proceed with caution with any of them. A ton has already been written here and elsewhere about Ovechkin, Terry, Seider and Co. so I wanted to touch on a couple of the deeper cuts and the really high-flyers instead.

Joonas Donskoi is an enigma wrapped in a line blender on an expansion team. The point is his usage and deployment vacillate wildly as Seattle deals with injuries, and tries different even strength and power-play combinations. Looking at averages we see that he has added about two minutes overall (just over 16 minutes a night), and a little bit of time on the power-play. The problem is he has just as many sub 10-minute games as he does 20 plus minute games, and as many 12 and 13 minute nights as he does 18 and 19 minute games. His power-play numbers are just as variable spending half his time with about 30 percent of the power-play time and the other half in the neighborhood of 75%. He likely isn't on your roster with only a 40-point pace thus far, but with his low shooting percentage (no goals thus far) and recent hot streak (all assists) in his last five games you might be tempted. Don't. His deployment is all over the place, he is shooting less than he ever has in his career. The maybe four goals he could have at this point is canceled out by the 4-5 assists he shouldn't have and that still leaves him as a 40-point player going forward who isn't shooting and often finds himself on the fourth line. 

Ryan Suter's 50-point pace is actually right in line with his last…oh I don't know, career. But there are some worrying signs. His average time on ice is right around 23 minutes a night, which is great and all, but he used to see over 29 minutes and as recently as 2018-19 was seeing almost 27. His power-play time, while just over two minutes, is again down almost a minute from recent seasons. His shot rates have been trending down every season from over two shots a game in 15-16 to barely over one shot a game this season. The only thing keeping Suter afloat right now is a career high shooting percentage (10.7 – almost double his career average) and an incredible secondary assist percentage. Suffice it to say this is not a return to form after a disappointing 20-21. If you have Suter get out while you still can.

The desert appears to be a wasteland for everyone except Shayne Gostisbehere. His 56-point pace is his highest since 2017-18. He is seeing over 21 minutes (over 20 really) for the first time since that season and matching his power-play deployment from his most productive seasons. His shooting percentage isn't too inflated, and his shot rate is consistent, though a little lower than his most productive seasons. The red flags are of course his secondary assist rate, and his point participation numbers (IPP) where he is getting in on more goals than we would normally expect him to. If we regressed him a bit based on those numbers we would expect closer to the 40-point pace going forward. The increased deployment and Arizona's likely reliance on someone like Gostisbehere to put up production though makes him the most interesting of these three players, and the one potential hold to wait and see what happens.

That is all for this week

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