Skip to main content

A Look at Total Shooting Percentage

It seems that any time you try and discuss the most effective shooters in the NHL, people gravitate to how "hard" or "heavy" the shot is, at the expense of other considerations, like how quickly shots are released or how accurate they are. Booming slapshots are more impressive to most than a quick wrister, so the trend is somewhat understandable.

Today's piece focuses on bringing in Missed Shots into the overall shooting percentage statistic. Normally, Shooting Percentage is defined as Goals divided by Shots on Goal. But what about shots that miss the net by three feet? Those aren't counted in the usual Shooting Percentage, so I've brought each players Missed Shots total and included that in a "Total Shots" column, which then yields "Total Shooting %" as well. Our data comes from the stats available at NHL.com - pulling together summary stats for the top 830 players ranked by shots on goal (this takes us down to guys with only 1 shot on goal all year, so I'm confident it covers over 99% of the data), linked to the RTSS stats that are also available. I do have one bone to pick with the guys at
NHL.com, as when you start pulling down page after page of stats, they switch the ordering of columns from one page to the next, apparently in an attempt to throw up an obstacle to mass access to the data. It doesn't work, as it takes about 10 minutes of work in Excel or Open Office to fix the columns. I've sent an email to their web team to see if that can be rectified, and will post whatever response I get here.

In total, besides the 73,744 "conventional" shots on goal, 7,442 Goals and an overall Shooting Percentage of 10.09%, there were an additional 29,725 Missed Shots. With our new figure of 103,469 Total Shots, that means 28.7% of those missed the net entirely, and 7.2% scored.
The table below shows the Top 30 players from last season, ranked by Total Shooting Percentage. The Rank column along the left reflects the conventional Shooting Percentage rank, and those players shaded green or pink moved significantly up or down in the standings once we bring Missed Shots into the equation. Also on the far right, we see the overall portion of shots that miss the net, with highest values in pink and lowest in green. So who are the standouts, both positive and negative?

First off, note that the Top 11 in conventional shooting percentage all fared well in the Total Shooting % stat. League leader Alex Tanguay still came out at the top of the list, since only 21.9% of his shots missed the net. In particular, Pierre Turgeon of the Colorado Avalanche missed only 16.8% of the time, well below the rest of this group. On the wild side, the "hit or miss" gang appears to be Toronto's Matt Stajan and Chad Kilger, and Detroit's Pavel Datsyuk, who shot wide or high over a third of the time.

One often-cited piece of conventional hockey wisdom is that guys with big, booming slapshots may miss the net quite a bit, but make up the difference with a shot that is more likely to score when it is on target. I didn't find anything to help support that theory (no correlation between Missed Shot levels and Shooting Percentage), and drilling down into further detail (i.e. comparing slapshots, to wristers, etc.) isn't possible because when the NHL records a Missed Shot, we don't know the shot type or distance involved.

I'll follow up later today with a similar table from this season so far...

Popular posts from this blog

Cheer up, it's the holidays...

Why is it that various media outlets continue trying to put their own spin on the "what's wrong with the NHL" story? Our latest example comes from The Hockey News , in a piece by Jay Greenburg entitled, "Excitement Level On The Decline." Take the opening sentence: Attendance is down and yet still up from before the lockout, leaving it arguable whether buildings in New Jersey and Florida are half-full or half empty. It's no surprise that attendance is down from last season, particularly if you compare the first half of 2005-06 to the first half of this year. Coming out of the lockout, there were legions of fans starved to see the on-ice product, particularly in light of the massive rule changes. This year is more indicative of business as usual, so the fact that the league is above pre-lockout levels is a positive. Toss in the projection that overall revenues are increasing despite a 1% decrease in attendance, and I'd say that paying fans have come back
Read more

How I'm Trying To Make Money Sports Blogging

To kick off this series of articles general sports-blogging articles here at OTF Classic, I think it's best to start with a comment that Brad left here last week, after I shared my goals for 2012 , which include specific revenue targets: I considered diving into the world of internet marketing myself, but I felt that my friends would hate me for bugging them about stuff. I mean, it's pretty low-risk high-reward, so it's tempting. I wouldn't mind reading about tips on how to maximize impact of blogging in general to make it a legitimate income source. Trying to make money at sports blogging can be a very touchy subject - for the vast majority of us, this is an activity we pursue to both exercise our creativity and share our love of the game, whether it's hockey, football, badminton, whatever, with fellow fans. Mixing that personal conversation with a commercial message can turn people off, especially if it becomes too intrusive for the reader. It's not unrea
Read more

Social Media, Internet Marketing, and Real, Paying Customers - it really works!

Applying the basic tenets of internet marketing (SEO best practices and social media network building) have helped me grow the readership and engagement over at On The Forecheck tremendously in recent years, but lately I've been wondering if those same techniques could be applied to small- or medium-sized local businesses, to help them drive real, tangible business results. I'm talking about not just drawing idle hockey fans looking to a blog so they can muse over line combinations, but helping businesses connect with potential customers in ways that otherwise wouldn't occur. Recently, I was able to help make just such a thing happen, and it shows just how great the opportunities are for small, local businesses which may not have the resources or skills available to extend their brand effectively on the internet.
Read more