As regular readers (I know you're out there; I can hear you yawning) will know, I'm fixin' to publish the result of the historical Point Allocation system in the relatively near future. In order to do that, I wanted an efficient means to indicate a player's position.
The typical system for modern players is simply G, D, C, LW and RW. Sometimes LW and RW are written as L and R instead. Of course, these are not the only positions we need to worry about when discussing historical stats. We also have the point, cover-point and rover. These could be written as P, CP and R respectively. But then, in order to use R for rover, we would not be able to use it for right wing, forcing us to use RW and LW for the wings.
Two-letter codes for the positions are undesirable, because they're not efficient. What if a player split time between cover-point and left wing? Should we write that LW/CP, using five characters to show something that we should be able to do in two? I don't think so.
That's why I settled on a (mostly) numerical code to show the positions.
| Code | Position |
|---|---|
| G | goaltender |
| 1 | point |
| 2 | cover-point |
| 3 | defence |
| 4 | rover |
| 5 | centre |
| 6 | left wing |
| 7 | right wing |
| 8 | wing |
| 9 | forward |
So LW/CP can now be written 62. The goaltender position is different enough from any of the skaters that it need not conform to the system; in fact goaltender stats will be presented separately from skater stats so that position does not need to be included in the codes.
What are the 8 and 9 for? Well, often in game reports newspapers would list the goaltender, point, cover-point, rover, centre and two wings, but would not specify which side each player played. Code 8 is for that type of player. The 9 is for cases, mostly in the very early years of the game, when the four forwards would be listed only as forwards, not by individual position. Players such as that get a 9 in this system.
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