Evolution of Hockey Positions

If you're reading this blog, chances are that you know what rovers, points and cover-points are. Or were. They're part of the history of the game; before defencemen we had points and cover-points (or simply covers), the former playing close to the goalkeeper, and the latter being a conduit between the defence and the forwards. The rover was phased out of eastern hockey around 1911/12, while the point/cover positions morphed into side-by-side defenders soon thereafter.

But that's not all there is to the story of positional changes in hockey. If you go far back enough, specifically to 1875 when the first organized, indoor games between two opposing clubs took place in Montreal, there were typically nine men on the ice for either side, rather than the seven we're used to dealing with in early hockey history. They played four forwards as we're used to from the rover era, but had two extra men on defence. Not only that, but the defensive positions were not yet called point and cover, they were back and half-back, a clear indication of the fact that the rules of the game were adapted from football.

I can't be 100% of how the players typically lined up, but I think the following makes sense. The goalkeeper is marked with GK, the backs with B, the half-backs with HB, and the forwards with F.

The first big change in hockey positions came around 1880, when two men were dropped from the standard lineup. I'm not sure of the impetus for this change. The number nine had basically been chosen to fit the practical limits of the Victoria Skating Rink (which bequeathed its 200' by 85' rink size to North American hockey); when played outdoors hockey was played with more men than that. At some point they may have simply decided that 18 men on the ice made it a bit too crowded, and reduced it to 7-on-7.

However, they did not immediately adopt the seven-with-a-rover lineup. They dropped a back and a forward, still playing with two half-backs, thusly:

This standard seems to have lasted about a decade, after which one of the half-backs transmogrified into a fourth forward (the rover), and the other became the cover-point (CP), while the back was now called the point (P). This change from four defenders and three forwards to three defenders and four forwards probably had some effect on goal-scoring, which did uptick at this time, as we'll be looking at in the near future.

This was the standard in eastern hockey for about 20 years, when the decision was made, at least at the game's highest level, to eliminate the rover (as discussed here). That opened the ice up a bit, and brings us close to the setup we're used to today:

It took only another season or so before the point/cover-point setup gave way to the modern lineup, which we still have today...

...which, I think it's safe to say, is not going to change any time soon. It's worked well for almost a century now.

The usual caveats for this sort of general discussion apply, of course. The years mentioned may not be entirely precise, and it's unlikely that every team adopted the same lineup at the same time. Each change would have taken a bit of time to become standard.

Assists per Goal in the 1910s and Beyond

I was recently asked about assist rates in the first years that assists were officially awarded. As you may know, the PCHA began awarding assists in 1912/13, and the NHA followed a season later. And as you might also know, for many years very few assists were awarded per goal (as compared to modern standards). How few? This few:

It's possibly interesting to note that the NHA/NHL awarded fewer assists per goal than their western counterparts most every year (though their rate is less consistent). The possibly interesting part is whether this is simply due to slightly different standards in awarding assists, or whether it has to do with the fact that the PCHA still used the rover while the NHA did not. With more players available to participate in an offensive rush, perhaps it makes sense that more assists were awarded per goal.

It may be worth noting that when the PCHA finally dropped the rover after the 1921/22 season (as they began playing an interlocking schedule with the WCHL, which did not use the seventh man), its assist rate dropped from 0.57 to 0.51, and stayed at that level or lower, whereas in the final seven seasons with the rover, the PCHA had an assist rate of between 0.57 and 0.60 six times. This suggests to me that at least part of the reason that the NHA/NHL had a lower assist per goal rate is the lack of a fourth forward.

The first really big jump in assist rates occurred in in 1929/30. In 1928/29 there were 0.60 assists per goal, but there were 0.82 the following season. This is clearly due to the change in the forward passing rules that season, which made individual rushes less important and passing plays more important. The rate went to 0.92, then 1.05 in the next two seasons, and would never drop below that level again.