The Detroit Red Wings haven’t been short on playmakers in the past few seasons. Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, Gustav Nyquist and Frans Nielsen are some of the big names who have the ability to set up teammates and aren’t necessarily pure goal scorers.



That’s not to say they can’t score, but they prefer to pass rather than shoot.



Other than assists, there is no league-kept stat that tracks the best passers. However, a passing project by Ryan Stimson aimed to change that. Stimson, along with Corey Sznajder and a number of volunteers manually tracked shot assists for the past three seasons. A shot assist is defined as a pass that leads to a shot attempt. In addition to primary shot assists — the last pass that leads to a shot — they also tracked secondary shot assists, and tertiary shot assists (for the past two seasons).



Why do we care about shot assists? Shot assists allow us to account for pre-shot movement that affects the quality of the shot being taken. Stimson found it’s more predictive of future goal involvement than primary assists, and a player with a high shot assist rate is exhibiting a skill rather than being the beneficiary of luck.



So what does the data say about the Red Wings’ passers?



Let’s take a...