Generalized Energy Statistics and Kostka--Macdonald Polynomials

We give an interpretation of the t=1 specialization of the modified Macdonald polynomial as a generating function of the energy statistics defined on the set of paths arising in the context of Box-Ball Systems (BBS-paths for short). We also introduce one parameter generalizations of the energy statistics on the set of BBS-paths which all, conjecturally, have the same distribution.