I've been fiddling around with shot distances and the like from the NHL game sheets for the last couple of seasons. One game in particular stands out, not necessarily in a good way.
Remember that early season road trip out west, where Ottawa was sort of getting their clock cleaned on a nightly basis? The team talked about the importance of getting that brutal swing (which is really 'brutal' in the sense that you more or less have to play all three California teams in succession) out of the way, but I think as the season progressed, people realized that this road trip was just a massive highlighting of the team's flaws. They never recovered.
Now, the games against Los Angeles and San Jose were obvious trainwrecks, mostly because they conceded 82-shots. That's sort of incredible when you remember that the Kings game was 3-0 Los Angeles about seventeen minutes in. Ottawa, through the power of score effects mostly, rallied to earn a point. The Kings sat on their heels all night and still only conceded 25-shots.
The Anaheim game, though -- that was the real disaster. Ottawa lost 4-1, out-shot 56-31. I remember talking about how well Robin Lehner played that game, despite giving up four goals. That's ... not common?
Here's what's amazing -- the average shot distance for an Anaheim player on the evening was less than 28-feet. I want you to think long and hard about the importance of shot distance and the role it plays in shooting percentages. Particularly, this older graph that's been replicated by anyone/everyone who has looked into this stuff.
This would seem obvious. And yet, I couldn't be more emphatic about how outrageous yielding 56-shots from ~ 28-feet is. As a comparable, Boston -- over the course of a full season -- conceded about 29 shots per game from about 36-feet.
This is how it broke down, by shooter. As a general rule (you can see this in the earlier graph), I consider shots from inside 30-feet to be fairly dangerous, the danger level increasing with each foot closer to the net. Look at how many fall into this category:
Let's remember here that Anaheim led Ottawa in this game for about 59-minutes, so you'd like to think that score effects (and the way they mitigate shot distances through risk averse hockey, a la Los Angeles I) would have played a role. No.
Ottawa had some good games. Ottawa had some bad games. Ottawa had a few horrifying games. People were shock-and-awed by the 6-1 loss to Detroit in February, but without even looking at the data in that game, I'd guess their performance against Anaheim was worse.
As an aside, how many players in the league are better at getting deep into the home plate area and finishing than Mathieu Perreault? It's a legitimate talent.
-- 
Ottawa Senators Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»