Here's a statistic that has been floating around my brain for more than 30 years ... and it's time to apply it in a new way.
Baseball writer Bill James once came up with a way of measuring offensive performance within the structure of the team. It was called Runs Created. The idea was to create a formula in which the individual totals of the players' contributions would add up to the number of runs scored by the team for a year.
At some point around 1990, when I worked for the Sabres, I tried to do a simple version of that for hockey. I started with the reference point that a goal has two statistical components - the goal and the assist. Responsibility for a particular goal can vary on the play. Sometime the goal scorer does all the work. Sometime the assist is the key play.
Therefore, I assigned 50 percent of the credit to the goal-scorer. So if Alexander Mogilny scores 50 goals, he gets credit for 25 goals created. That was the easy part.
But what about assists? The problem was that not all goals have two assists. So I did the math, and discovered that if you take about 30 percent of a players' assist total, you have the assist component. (I think the exact number was .306.) In other words, if you register 50 assists, you get credit for 15 goals. So a 50-50=100 player would get credit for creating 40 goals. Add those up for a particular team and they should - and did come close to the offensive output.
All right .... what about in indoor lacrosse?
I used the same technique for this sport - a 50/50 split in credit between goals and assists. The number for assists changes in lacrosse. Last season, I counted up (by hand, no less) 2,711 goals in the NLL's regular season. On those goals, there were 4,332 assists. So the goals are multiplied by .500, and the assists are multiplied by .313. By the way, the multiplier for assists when I did it last year was .316 - so it hasn't changed much. It's a little higher than in the NHL. Then again, it's easier to complete passes in lacrosse because you are on two feet and not skates.
(Footnote: That number has come down quite a bit over the years. Back in the early days of indoor lacrosse, there were fewer assists awarded so the number was around .400. It was down to .350 or so about 10 years later, and reached current levels in the 2010s.)
With that done, let's see what a top 10 looks like for the 2025-26 season:
Name - Team - Goals - Assists - Goals Created
Keegan Bal - Vancouver - 45 - 79 - 22.5 + 24.7 = 47.2
Connor Fields - Rochester - 41 - 78 - 20.5 + 24.4 = 44.9
Dhane Smith - Buffalo - 39 - 79 - 19.5 + 24.7 = 44.2
Jeff Teat - Ottawa - 44 - 71 - 22.0 + 22.2 - 44.2
Josh Byrne - Buffalo - 36 - 77 - 18.0 + 24.1 = 42.1
Alex Simmons - Oshawa - 41 - 68 - 20.5 + 21.3 = 41.8
Tanner Cook - Calgary - 49 - 52 - 24.5 + 16.3 = 40.8
Mitch Jones - Las Vegas - 35 - 69 - 17.5 + 21.6 = 39.1
Tyler Pace - Calgary - 31 - 72 - 15.5 + 22.5 = 38.0
Jonathan Donville - Las Vegas - 27 - 78 - 13.5 + 24.4 = 37.9
Bal wins the title, which goes with his scoring title. I'm sure he'll treasure both of them equally.
What happens when we add in the leaders from the last two seasons? This:
Name - Team - Year - Goals - Assists - Goals Created
Josh Byrne - Buffalo - 2023-24 - 53 - 82 - 26.5 + 25.9 = 52.4
Jeff Teat - New York - 2023-24 - 58 - 72 - 29.0 + 22.8 = 51.8
Connor Fields - Rochester - 2023-24 - 56 - 64 - 28.0 + 20.2 = 50.2
Josh Byrne - Buffalo - 2024-25 - 44 - 90 - 22.0 + 28.4 = 48.4
Dhane Smith - Buffalo - 2023-24 - 33 - 101 - 16.5 + 31.9 = 48.4
Dhane Smith - Buffalo - 2024-25 - 32 - 102 - 16.0 + 32.2 = 48.2
Connor Fields - Rochester - 2024-25 - 46 - 77 - 23.0 + 24.3 = 47.3
Keegan Bal - Vancouver - 2025-26 - 45 - 79 - 22.5 + 24.7 = 47.2
Jeff Teat - Ottawa - 56 - 56 - 2024-25 - 28.0 + 17.7 = 45.7
Joe Resetarits - Philadelphia - 2024-25 - 41 - 80 - 20.5 + 25.3 = 45.8
Bal was the only one from 2025-26 to join the top 10, and he knocked himself out of the list. If I get inspired, I'll go back further in time - although it's a bit of work to do so.
Updated April 27, 2026
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