I mean they kept track of the number of goals and assists , but the default stats for players don't include the playoff

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[–] 11 points 6 days ago

NHL stats are just for the regular season since everyone plays the same number of games during the regular season. If the Oilers miss out on the playoffs one year, it wouldn’t be too fair to McDavid if the other superstars got extra games to improve their season’s stats where he didn’t.

To put it into an example, let’s say you’re comparing the seasons of two players, A and B. Player A makes it to the playoffs, player B doesn’t. Player A scores 46 goals in the regular season and 5 in the playoffs. Player B scores 50 goals in the regular season. If you include the playoffs, it looks like player A was the better goal scorer for that year, but that’s only because he played more games. Getting to the playoffs is a team victory, not just an individual one, so punishing a great player stuck on a bad team by having other players who made it to the playoffs have comparatively better stats isn’t fair.

Playoff stats are still tracked, just separately. So you can still compare with playoff stats if you want to, it’s just not the default.

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