On shooting percentage, the NHL-AHL commute, and join the college hockey bracket competition
Happy Monday, hope you are well.
OK, trying to get back into a more proper swing of things.
Again, thank you to everyone who understood/commented/etc… about last week and read/appreciated that nature of Friday’s piece here.
Sadly, it kind of feels a bit compounded today after the tragic loss this past weekend of Jessi Pierce, who I knew as a colleague in my olden days at NHL.com and was always. I’m kind of at a loss for words on this right now, and I think I summed it up as best as I could at the end of the DLLS show last night.
It’s hard to pivot from that, but again, appreciate the space and freedom here to be human.
Today I wanted to chat/write about a couple things.
First of all, if you are a reader at this site, I invite you to join the NCAA Hockey Bracket challenge I put together. It’s free to join and you can join at this link and use the password: ShapShots2026Bracket
As I put in a note that may or may not have been in your email, I’ll figure out some fun prizes depending on how many people enter. Either way it’s a fun way to track the tournament and I plan to some more writing the regionals later this week, and then will be attending the Frozen Four in April.
I was over at Detroit Red Wings practice this morning and caught up with Dominik Shine, who celebrated the birth of his second child this week on Friday night back in Grand Rapids.
The Grand Rapids Griffins captain, and the winner of the inaugural Bruce Boudreau Award, is one of my favorite stories in the sport. He now famously made his NHL debut last season as a 31-year-old after close to a decade in the AHL and then scored his first career NHL goal this season.
He’s also commuting back-and-forth on the daily from Detroit to Grand Rapids while in the NHL, doing his best to be home and present with the growing family, while also fulfilling his NHL duties with the Red Wings. Most players when called up from Grand Rapids, if they don’t already have a place to live, stay in a hotel in Detroit until they get told to get a place.
For Shine it’s obviously a bit of a different situation and he said he’s embracing making the drive, even if it’s meant some extra hours on the road on practice days.
It’s funny, or ironic, or whatever other term you want to use, because it’s the opposite drive that Erik Gustafsson has been making this season, playing in the AHL and commuting from Detroit each day to Grand Rapids.
I watched the Dallas Stars and Vegas Golden Knights closely last night, and while Vegas won 3-2, there’s a Stars angle and story that’s been percolating in my mind recently about the Stars shooting percentage.
Dallas is currently tied for the league lead with Montreal with a 13.1 percent shooting percentage, they are two of just five times with a shooting percentage above 12 percent in the league and that feels notable in a year where shooting percentage, on average at 10.3 percent across the league is the highest than it’s been since the 1993-1994 season when league average shooting percentage was 11.5 percent.
So for the Stars, and any team, how do we look at this?
Is it a shooting percentage bender that’s unsustainable? Is it something that we need to account for in the postseason? And, perhaps most importantly, how do we use this to redefine our expectations?
For me, and this is partially as my internally goalie apologist, I’ve redefined what is a good and bad performance when it comes to finishing and saves, a .900 for a goalie or a team is now above average and I think we need to accept that.
I’ve talked to players an coaches about it, and while there seems to be some theories that how shots are counted have some impact, and I’d like to dive more into that at some point, the more prevailing note I’ve gotten from NHLers is that players aren’t wasting as many shots as before, that there’s become a more patient approach, sometimes frustratingly, to the puck possession element of the game.
This is most amplified during 3-on-3 overtime, think about how that has evolved from a shoot-em-up experience to a wait-and-see slog.
I’ve also asked some NHL scouts and players from other teams about the Stars and their shooting percentage, about whether they think the results match the actual play on the ice and there tends to be a consensus that the Stars shooting percentage is a real thing and not a glass cannon facade.
Again, that’s based off polling some players and scouts and coaches, not looking at pure data. According to MoneyPuck the Stars rank fifth in the league in goals scored above expected at all situations with a positive 10.6, which to me indicates potential regression but not nearly as much as you would highlight the Buffalo Sabres shooting bender.
There’s time for another deep dive on this coming up, and I will probably do that, but just wanted to rip out some thoughts here while I had an hour to write.
As always, thanks for reading.