"Shoot the Puck!" Or...Don't? An NHL Analysis

As a young hockey player growing up, I was always instructed to “shoot the puck!” So, I did. But I didn’t always score. Was there a chance I’d score? Sure, there was. But one thing I always noticed but, apparently, coaches never did was it wasn’t always about how much you shot, but when you shot. Or how. Or where.

Case in point: Sunday’s Detroit Red Wings vs. Los Angeles Kings game. The LA Kings fired 47 shots at Red Wings netminder Jimmy Howard. He stopped 45 of them. The Red Wings, on the other hand, only shot the puck 31 times. Kings goalie Jonathan Quick stopped 28 of them. That’s a Kings loss. So, how much does a large number of shots really matter? Now, some people might say that a little luck was involved with the win – posts were hit, the Wings’ winning goal barely snuck over the line, etc. But the bottom line is this: the team that shoots the most doesn’t always win. In fact, when you look at the numbers, there’s a really no correlation between the number of shots taken and number of wins.

When I started this analysis, I wasn’t even looking at NHL team totals. I had wanted to see which of my favorite players were shooting the puck most effectively. Then it turned into a team analysis, and that’s where it got interesting. I expected the teams with the higher win totals to have the higher number of shots. With almost every team having played at least 10 games (except a couple teams who had a game cancelled due to the latest winter storm), I looked at the teams with 6-9 wins and found that wasn’t always the case. Of the 14 teams with 6 or more wins (as of Sunday, February 10), half had fewer than 316 shots. 316 is an important number (again, as of 2/10) because that is the average number per team of total shots taken in the NHL. With that, of the teams that are above .500, only 7 teams take more than the league average of shots.

 I wanted to take this a step further and look at how those 7 teams are doing so well, yet not shooting the puck a lot. So, let’s head on over to the shooting percentage category. The shooting percentage is the rate at which shots turn into goals. Theoretically, the higher the shooting percentage, the better off your team will be. The 3 teams with the highest shooting percentage all have shot totals below the league average. They also have at least 6 wins, and as many as 9. These 3 teams also rank 1, 3, and 4 in goals scored.

 The teams with the fewest wins, 3-5, show an interesting story as well. Logically, half those teams have above league average shot totals. However, looking at shooting percentage, we see where these teams are faltering. Of the teams with 3 wins – lowest in the league – all of them are shooting below 9%, which is also below the league average shooting percentage of 9.31%. If we add in the teams with 4 wins, for a total of eight teams, only one is shooting above the 9.31% mark. And if we add in the remaining eight teams with 5 wins - sixteen teams with 5 or fewer wins - we find that only three teams are shooting above 9.31%. This is, predictably, a very different outcome from the teams that are above .500, who have only four of fourteen teams shooting below the 9.31% average.

Shooting percentage is important because it is indicative of a team’s ability to get quality chances on net. Sure, you’re going to have a lucky bounce or a puck that will get through every player on the ice en route to the goal, but most times goals are scored on quality chances. Teams who fire the puck at will, from every conceivable distance or angle, are not going to be the teams that succeed long-term.

If we look at the teams with the most wins, the Chicago Blackhawks, the Pittsburgh Penguins, and the Anaheim Ducks, all of them have shooting percentages above the 75th percentile. In fact, they are 3, 5, and 4 in shooting percentage, respectively. So these teams are picking their spots and finding success doing so. Not putting their head down and winding up for a shot, but methodically looking for an open man, an extra pass, a better opportunity. Peppering a goalie can be effective, but these teams are showing that picking your spot may be more important.

This is not to say that this is the norm among the top teams. As stated earlier, only half of above-.500 teams are below league-average shot totals. However, this is saying that, especially at the lower levels of hockey where we want players to improve, telling players to “shoot the puck!” at every opportunity isn’t the only way to do it. Nor is it necessarily the best way.



*All statistics taken from Yahoo! Sports on 2/10/13.


This post can also be found at my MBA's official blog, the SDSU SportsMBA Blog. http://wp.me/p38Jcd-3w

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