OK, this is not the first time I've seen this in our SO's - we send guys out that on paper have a better % of scoring but we DON'T send out the hot hand from that night.
In other words, why was LG not used in the SO???????
- BiffPokaroba
Even though I doubt NHL teams practice shootouts all that much, I would hope they'd do it often enough that the coach would have some idea of who might be the best to use. (Although Hronek? Really?)
I do think there are times when going with the "hot hand" might make sense but also I'm not sure that a guy who banged in a rebound and made a nice tip is automatically going to be the best choice to attempt an undefended breakaway.
Incidentally, your comment made me dig into some shootout stats for the first time in a long time. Some fun discoveries:
- Pavel Datsyuk was used in 100% of his team's shootouts over his entire career. 98 attempts in 98 shootout games played. That's the most total attempts for a guy with a 100% usage rate by far. The next most is Sergei Zubov with 31. After that you have to go all the way down to Elias Pettersson with 18.
- I was surprised to discover that Jakub Vrana has only been used in 6 shootouts (out of 23 for Washington; he's scored on 3). I'm going to presume that's mostly because it's really hard to get into the top 3 shooters when you've already got Oshie, Backstrom, and Kuznetsov in your lineup. It seems like Vrana would be really good at them.
