It’s a big day for “shooooot” guys.

Every time I see a number related to shot attempts (especially in a game that I’m not watching), I go down a rabbit hole. Where are these shot attempts coming from? Why are so many or so few shot attempts translating into shots on goal? What impact is the goalie having on shot attempt selection? Shot attempt shot attempt shot attempt shot attempt!

Shooting numbers are some of the most fascinating statistics in hockey. They’re easy to understand, because we all know what generally constitutes a shot attempt/shot. And when done right, they win games.

So much can be traced back to shooting numbers. A team/player is on a heater? Check their shooting percentage. You’re trying to learn more about your favourite team’s defensive structure? Study maps of their shots against.

A lot has to happen before a shot gets taken, but that’s a conversation for another day. Let’s talk about what we observe when we talk about shots, and how to be #smarter when we do so.

If you’re like me, you get annoyed by the smallest, most harmless generalizations in hockey conversations. One that immediately turns me into a devil’s advocate is when someone checks in on shot counts without watching a hockey game and says, “ah, looks like Team X is outplaying Team Y.”

Sometimes, it’s true. If I had to make an uneducated guess, I would think that at the end of a game, it’s probably more likely that the team with the most shots played the better hockey game. But not all the time.

And not frequently enough for us to assume that the scorebug is telling us something valuable.

I think two things can be true at once. 1) When all other things are equal, you would prefer to take more shots than your opponent, and 2) taking more shots does not necessarily give you a better chance to win a hockey game.

Let’s dive into some interesting observations about shots.

In the modern National Hockey League, gone are the days of just shooting the puck. Even the post-Covid Carolina Hurricanes, who developed a reputation for being a Corsi-merchant team, became increasingly selective of what shots they were taking, where their shots occurred, and when they were choosing to pull the trigger.

At the 21-minute mark of this conversation between Dimitri Filipovic and Kevin Woodley, this topic is addressed in a really insightful way. Also the sky is blue, the Canucks’ skate logo rocks, and Luke Hughes is overrated.

I flag a few trends for your consideration:

🎯 Shooters have gotten really good. In the era of the David Pastrnaks and Connor Bedards of the world, we simply have to acknowledge how lethal some shots are. Players’ releases are quicker and more accurate - and the technology of sticks enables it. Coaches have gotten so creative with their deployment, so you’ll see a lot more shot attempts being taken in offensive environments that were set up with that specific shooter in mind.

🤔 Bad shots are high risk, low reward. And who wants that? Think about what happens when a forward dumps the puck at the end of their shift. You’ll have one forechecker deep if you’re lucky, and they’ll swing their stick a little bit, but the opposing defenseman will usually have no problem making a crisp exit pass. As hockey fans, we’ll dunk on that play pretty often. Ultimately, what’s the difference between that and a low-danger, unscreened shot from the top of the circle? Both of them are turnovers you didn’t have to make - only real difference is that one adds a SOG tick to the scorebug.

🎨 High danger chances can be created in a lot of different areas. Oldheads like to dunk on expected goals because of the complexity of quality filters, but they’ve secretly been doing it for a long time with their own language. Homeplate chances and slot shots have widely been regarded as more desirable than perimeter shots. But the idea of a “high danger chance” has really expanded. Think of rush chances, moving screen shots, faceoff set plays, deliberate rebounds… if a team is doing a great job neutralizing one type of chance, there are so many other ways their opponent can create scoring chances from different areas of the ice.

Every coin has two sides, so in classic Lyss fashion, I’m about to walk back everything I just said.

Great shots have a higher likelihood of going in, but a higher likelihood isn’t a guarantee. I just spent far too many paragraphs dunking on low-danger shots because of how quickly they can become turnovers, but when you’re curating high-danger chance environments that rely on high-percentage shots, what happens if, and let’s be real, when, that shot misses? Depending on where it’s coming from, a bad bounce from a crossbar or the end boards can result in a turnover just as quickly.

We also can’t forget about the long game in hockey. Sometimes, we watch players dump and chase with irritation, but even if the F1 is unsuccessful on the retrieval, they could still have spent a few seconds cross-checking the defender’s ribs and exhausting them. Hockey games are often just 60 minutes of trading chances and making/capitalizing on mistakes.

If you tire out your opponent to the point where they’re making a ton of mistakes, low percentage shots become higher percentage simply because of your environment.

Think about how many games you’ve seen where the result has been decided by a bounce off a butt or a flub from the point that had no business going in. Process needs to be a priority, but at the end of the day, if you don’t shoot, you don’t score, and always waiting for the perfect opportunity can hinder your ability to break open games.

It took me this long to get to an “expected by whom?” argument.

One of my most confident takes in hockey is that ultimately, one of the best measures of success is asking, did this team do what they wanted to do in the game?

Different teams have different strengths and strategies. Sometimes, we see a head-to-head matchup that simplifies everything; one team’s priority could be to eliminate a specific shot type, and their opposition’s priority could be to create said shot type. In that case, it’s easy enough to see who came out on top after 60 minutes.

But this is hockey, and hockey usually isn’t that simple. Maybe your team’s favourite type of shot to take can only be created in a situation that your opposition would actually prefer to play in. Some chances are ~objectively~ more dangerous than others, but shooters and systems and game situations and goalies and the economy (jk) will influence what a team considers to be higher danger to them.

I think the easiest way to determine who’s outplaying who in a game is to develop an opinion on who is controlling the game’s shot attempts. Who is doing what they’re intending to do? There are challenges with that, because:

At the end of the day, it’s a bit of a catch-22. The scorebug’s shot counter has no filter for shot types and score effects, so it may not tell you enough of the story, but the game has also evolved to the point where more of the shots are actually dangerous, so maybe the scorebug can be helpful after all? Shooting is constantly evolving, so it’s difficult to diagnose anything with absolute certainty.

Shots are weird, hockey is cool - how’s that for a wrap-up? If you’re a shot nerd like I am, you’ll never have learned enough about shot selection in today’s NHL, and that’s kind of a beautiful thing.