Shootouts

I just got done beating this drum over in the recap comments, so I’m being a bit redundant, but I feel like this bears repeating. Not all of this is related to what you said, so pardon my incessant rambling, but I’m just gonna put it out there.

Like you kind of hinted to, a lot of people (myself included) are rather skeptical that there is such thing as a skill for the shootout, and that it’s anything more than a bunch of small samples that still don’t tell you much when put together, even over a whole season or over multiple seasons. Here’s a more advanced look at it; if that’s not your thing, here’s a pair of very basic lists that kind of work against it. Given that the same guy, Wojtek Wolski, had the second-best shootout season in the history of the shootout in 2008-09 and then had the second-worst shootout season ever the very next year, I’m inclined to believe that there’s a bit of luck involved there.

Wolski is the most extreme example, but there are others. Evgeni Malkin was at a 24.1% clip for his career and is 8-for-10 this season. Ilya Kovalchuk went 1-for-12 a few years back and is 8-for-9 this season. Not to mention, some of the best goal scorers in the league—guys who have scored plenty of one-on-one goals in their careers—don’t really have great career numbers on them. Marian Gaborik has been one of the best goal scorers since the lockout and he’s not good at it. Hell, Alex Ovechkin has below-average career numbers at it. Do those guys need more practice? Are they not skilled enough for the skills competition? Obviously they are—there’s just a shit ton of luck involved. Jarret Stoll and Jussi Jokinen are known as guys who are excellent at the shootout, but are you really gonna get mad at me if I send out a Gaborik or an Ovechkin before I send out a Stoll or a Jokinen? Would you have thought it was a bad idea for Dan Bylsma to send out Malkin because his numbers going into this year are poor (only to find out that this year he’s been excellent)? Trying to ride your best goal scorers in a contest where the point is to score goals isn’t a bad strategy, which is how I more or less unintentionally ended up defending the decision to put Simmonds in the shootout tonight, given that he has more goals than anyone on the team not named Hartnell or Giroux.

On the note of Stoll, though, here’s a quote from that second article, discussing his 9-of-10, “best season ever” last year:

If you go back and watch the shots Stoll scored you might be surprised to see that there’s really nothing fancy going on. He typically skates down the middle of the ice and simply lets go a quick slapshot between the circles, beating goaltenders over the glove hand just under the crossbar. It’s a strategy I’ve often wondered why more players don’t attempt. How many times do you see a player attempt a slick move only to have the puck roll off his stick?

Sooooo…do you want them to just go out there and practice slap shots? Is trying to deke or make a slick move a bad idea?

That’s kind of my other point. I have my doubts that there’s a whole lot that you can do to “practice” the shootout. Every skater in the NHL—yes, every one—has moves that they can make right in front of the goaltender that may or may not work in a shootout, and I doubt they need extra practice at those. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. Likewise, every goalie in the NHL has faced just about everything they possibly could face in the shootout—slapshots, quick wristers to the five-hole, quadruple dekes, etc.—and they’ve probably stopped all of them before and let all of them in before. I don’t think that just going into practice and doing things that they’ve been doing their whole lives is going to make things that much better. It’s not like playing NHL 12, where I used to be so damn bad at the shootout and since I went back and did it in practice mode so many times, now I finally know how to take it in and score at least 2/3 or so of the time. Real life skaters and goalies aren’t computers, I guess.

Yeah, it’s annoying that the Flyers never do well in them. I hate it too. But unless every other team is practicing them intensely, I’m not convinced that it’s much of a detriment that the Flyers aren’t practicing them—and even if everyone else is, it’s obvious that there’s a ton of luck to it that practice won’t necessarily solve.