New York Islanders Josh Ho-Sang: No Need to Balance Goals and Assists

New York Islanders Josh Ho-Sang wants to be a setup man, not a goal scorer. How many goals should playmakers produce?

New York Islanders have a conundrum up top. They desperately need a top-six right-wing forward. They couldn’t land one at last season’s trade deadline and they couldn’t add one in free agency this offseason. Now their best option is looking like Josh Ho-Sang.

That’s not a bad thing. Josh Ho-Sang is a great prospect who’s absolutely dynamic going forward. He’s at his best when he carries the puck up the ice and finds his teammates to create scoring opportunities.

But the Islanders want him to have more balance in his game. They want him to add scoring to his repertoire. Looking at some of the best playmakers in the modern era what should be a good benchmark for goals per point for Ho-Sang?

Goals Per Point

The reason I picked five of the best playmakers in the modern era was to show what is a good ratio for goals per point. I’m by no means suggesting that Josh Ho-Sang is comparable to any of these players.

But if Ho-Sang feels he can focus on creating goals and not scoring them, then I wanted to put him to the test.

The average goal per point in this listing is 27.3 percent. With seven goals on 24 points, Josh Ho-Sang is hitting a 29.2 goal per point average. That’s right where Ho-Sang should be.

Does Josh Ho-Sang need to add more goal scoring to his repertoire? I don’t think so. Based on what he’s done so far at the NHL level he’s scoring a fair amount.

Asking him to do more is asking him to do something he’s just naturally prone to do. The Islanders are getting a good ratio of goals out of Josh Ho-Sang already.

This is quite clearly a very simple analysis, but the point is made. At his rate of goal scoring, Josh Ho-Sang shouldn’t be worried about trying to get more balance between his goals and his assists he should be focused on being the best Josh Ho-Sang he can be.

Josh Bailey went through a similar situation years ago.

In his draft year, Josh Bailey scored 29 goals on 96 points. Or a 0.30 goal per point return. When Bailey hit the NHL right out from the draft he sought a balance between goals and assists. And he achieved that.

Over Bailey’s first six NHL season’s he scored 66 goals on 177 points or 0.387 goals per point. But over the following five years, when Bailey started turning into the Bailey we know today, he scored 74 goals on 256 points or 0.302 goals per point.

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Josh Ho-Sang shouldn’t be worried about finding the balance between goals and assists, nor should the New York Islanders. They should be worried about getting him to play to his strengths.