Regarding players' point scoring in Hockey

[eurythmech]

One obvious question that has always bothered me is, why do assists count the same as a goal scored? And most of all, why do second assists count as much as a goal?

A defenseman could pass the puck up to a team-mate on the defensive blue line, watch while he skates through half the opposing team, before he passes the center who slap shots an uncatchable puck in the upper corner, and be awarded the same number of points as the other two guys.

Isn't this absurd?

Has there ever been discussions on awarding diffent points to these? Like a 3-2-1 point system or something?

Also, why do NHL (It's the same in Europe, but NHL is bigger - so let's focus there) usually only count a player's scoring history in the regular season when tallying a player's career totals?

Like, when I look up Teemu Selänne, I will often find these career totals:

1041 540 505 1135

But, his play-off stats aren't included, they are as follows:

86 29 33 62

Now, it's fairly obvious that almost any play-off game is more important than any regular season game, so why is this?