Practical Concerns: The Gift Of Goals

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Lighting the lamp is the hardest thing to do in all of hockey, and scoring is down yet again in the NHL.

But instead of talking about ways to make goalies worse, by reducing the size of their equipment or by limiting what they can do on the ice, let’s look at a few habits shooters can acquire to shift the odds in their favor.

While the statistics and research behind the information presented here come from the NHL and CIS levels, I’m confident that any player – from Peewee to Beer League – can put them to good use in 2016.

I’ve already written about scoring in the shootout, so here are four scientifically sound tips for scoring more in open play.

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Practical Concerns: Ovechkin, Boyes And The Perfect Shootout Move

Why is Alex Ovechkin so bad in the shootout?

Why is Brad Boyes so good in the shootout?

Is there such as thing as the perfect shootout move? (the answer could be yes, so read on)

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A while ago, Steve Ness took the time to watch every single NHL shootout attempt between 2012 and 2015, and came to some interesting findings.

By Ness’ count, 32% of shootout attempts are converted, which is interesting if we look at the following two screencaps:

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Alex Ovechkin is one of the greatest goal scorers in the history of hockey. The Russian skates faster, shoots harder and has better stickhandling abilities than Boyes, so what gives?

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