Secondary assist in the NBA apparently has strict parameters (2 seconds one dribble) which makes me wonder first whether it's more suited to very quick passing sports with 5-6 players per team and second whether football just has a greater variety of ways of creating a goal that will always leave some ambiguity as to the most crucial pass. Also, the perfect goal (such as Argentina v Serbia 2006) is sometimes 10 or more passes where each is of equal importance. However, I agree that the killer ball is often the one preceding the final pass and it does need some recognition.
in the NHL, where they have existed for decades, awarding one to the player who makes the penultimate pass before a goal is left to judgement of the official scorer.
They would all have recorded a significant number of these, yes
It may be worth noting that they aren't tallied separately in ice hockey, rather they are aggregated with "primary" assists (the pass before the shot) in tables of assists and added to goals in the "scoring" tables (where goals and either kind of assist all count for one point).
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