Points in Hockey (PTS)

The rulebook defines points in two sentences. Rule 78.2 says each goal "shall count one point in the player's record," Rule 78.3 says the same of each assist, and both add that no player can collect more than one point on a single goal. So the goal scorer never picks up an assist on his own goal, however many times he touched the puck on the way up the ice.

The scoring title has had its own trophy since Art Ross, the former Bruins coach and general manager, presented one to the NHL in 1947. Montreal's Elmer Lach won the first, and it goes to the regular season's points leader with no vote at all. A tie goes to the player with more goals, then to the one who played fewer games. Wayne Gretzky won it a record 10 times. Gordie Howe won six, every one of them as a Red Wing.

Detroit's own record book runs through Howe and Steve Yzerman. Howe's 1,809 points are the franchise's career high and Yzerman is second, and Yzerman's 155-point season is still the best any Red Wing has had. NHL.com, Hockey-Reference and MoneyPuck all publish points from the league's official scoring, so the totals match within a few points from site to site (MoneyPuck's file for last season runs six short of the NHL's).

Points are addition with no weights. Every goal and every assist adds one, whatever the situation, and the scorer's manpower tags split the total the same way they split goals. These are the inputs:

• Goals (Rule 78.2)
• Primary assists, the last teammate's touch before the goal
• Secondary assists, the touch before that
• The manpower on each goal: even strength, power play or shorthanded
• Games played, for per-game rates

Here's a worked example, with invented round numbers. A center scores 25 goals and adds 20 primary and 15 secondary assists, so he finishes with 60 points and 45 primary points. If 18 of the 60 came on the power play, the other 42 came at even strength.

Standings points are a team stat with the same name. Rule 78.1 gives a team two points for any win, whether it comes in regulation, overtime or a shootout, and one point for a loss after regulation, and Rule 84.1 hands each team that point the moment a game ends regulation tied. Detroit finished last season with 92 standings points, 16th in the league.

Points measure how often a player figures in his team's scoring, and they're the most stable of the basic scoring stats. Among forwards who played 60 games in each of the last two seasons, points per game correlated at 0.88 across the pair, ahead of goals per game at 0.74. A goal total leans on shooting luck, and an assist total leans on teammates finishing. Add them together and the total holds up better than either half does.

Every goal feeds the column almost three times over. The league's skaters turned last season's goals into 2.69 points apiece, one for the scorer and the rest for whoever touched the puck before him. That's the assist at work. Among the regulars (60 or more games), the median forward had 37 points and the top tenth had 74 or more, while the median defenseman had 25. Connor McDavid led the league with 138.

Alex DeBrincat led Detroit with 85, tied for 19th in the league. Lucas Raymond had 76, Dylan Larkin 67 and Moritz Seider 60, which tied for 11th among the league's defensemen.

What's a good point total for a skater? It depends on the position before anything else. Only 20 of the 161 regular defensemen reached 50 points last season, while a third of the regular forwards did, so the same number marks a star on the blue line and a solid middle-six forward up front. You'll want to compare a player with his own position first.

Ranking scorers

Points are the league's default leaderboard, and they decide the Art Ross without a vote. They're the quickest check on a contract, too. A forward paid like a top-line scorer who sits near the forward median (37 points last season) needs another explanation, whether it's defense, injuries or a role that keeps him off the power play, and you should go find it before you call the deal a bust.

Splitting even strength from the power play

About one point in five came on the power play league-wide last season. DeBrincat ran a little above that rate, with 62 of his 85 points at even strength, while Raymond and Larkin each got about a third of theirs with the extra man and Seider got 28 of his 60 there. Context changes the order. At even strength alone, DeBrincat's lead over the rest of the roster grows from nine points to 13, and Seider falls behind Patrick Kane.

Adjusting for ice time

A point total measures minutes as much as anything. Seider averaged 25.7 a night last season and DeBrincat 18.5, so Seider scored 1.71 points per hour of ice time and DeBrincat 3.36. Which of the two is the better scorer, then? DeBrincat, by a wide margin, at nearly twice Seider's rate. The median regular forward scored 1.96 an hour and the median defenseman 0.99, though, so both Red Wings sat well above their position's middle once you divide by the clock.

A secondary assist counts as much as a goal

The column treats the player who scored and the one who touched the puck two passes earlier as equals. Game Score, the single-game rating Dom Luszczyszyn built at Hockey-Graphs, separates them, valuing a goal at 0.75 and a secondary assist at 0.55.

It doesn't adjust for minutes or role

NHL.com's own glossary notes that dividing points by games played doesn't account for ice time or special-teams time. A first-unit power-play forward and a fourth-liner can play the same number of games and see wildly different chances to score.

It's offense only

Points record the goals a player helped score and nothing about the ones he was on the ice for at the other end, so a high scorer who gives back as much as he creates looks the same in this column as one who doesn't.

The name means two things

Standings points belong to teams and depend on wins and overtime losses. A player's points belong to him, and the two numbers never feed each other directly.

Who has the most points in NHL history?

Wayne Gretzky, with 2,857 in the regular season, including the single-season record of 215 from 1985-86. Jaromir Jagr is a distant second with 1,921.