It's interesting because the two takeaways are the two things the Flames have been very successful at doing this year.
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- Good possession teams play in the offensive zone more frequently and the defensive zone less frequently. This could result in a shot type bias away from higher quality “rush shots” and towards lower quality zone play shots.
- It could be related to style of play and passing. It has been shown that shots after passes are more likely to result in goals and lateral movement, especially passes, across the “Royal Road” down the center of the ice also result in more goals. My theory is passing, and in particular passing through the center of the ice, while more likely to result in a goal is also more likely to result in a turnover. Thus teams that take riskier, longer passes especially lateral passes are more likely to see plays result in a goal if successful or a turnover (and no shot from that possession) if unsuccessful. Conversely a more conservative passing team with fewer cross-ice passes through traffic would have fewer possession not result in shots but in turn not get rewarded with high quality shots that result from those risky cross-ice plays.
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The Flames have been a speedy team that generates off the rush, and are a team that tends to make a lot of those cross seam/cross ice passes that are a little more high risk/high reward.
I do feel like there are times where this team is trading off taking a shot, in order to make the extra cross ice pass for a better scoring chance.