Quote:
Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist
But why bother? While blocking shots is a skill, it's irrelevant when determining who controlled the play. I'm confused as to it's relevance. Does it correlate with winning better?
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It's not irrelevant though.
Shot blocking has become a defensive strategy. If both teams make 60 shot attempts and one team blocks 20 of them while the other team doesn't, the team that blocked 20 is in a good position to have given up fewer goals.
This is a situation where the game has changed. 20 years ago (probably even 10), a blocked shot would be considered essentially identical to a shot that missed the net - in both cases, it was simply a failed shot but if you kept doing it, presumably you would eventually hit the net or get it by the block and be successful.
But in today's NHL, blocking shots has become more and more of a defensive strategy. The Flames, as an example, collapse to the centre of the ice, allowing the other team to maintain possession at the perimeter. The strategy is to keep shots to the outside and to block as many as possible, reducing scoring chances that way.
It is simply a different way to play defense.
And the stats, as designed, haven't adjusted to it.
If all teams employed the strategy equally, it would be fine and the numbers wouldn't get skewed. But when teams are playing different strategies, and one strategy freely allows for more shots against, the stats as they are, will be miss-leading.
Having said that, the difference would be unlikely to be really massive - the question is: how significant is the difference?