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Originally Posted by diane_phaneuf
Could they also allow less shots? Or maybe the pressure is causing more point shots than shots in the slot or down low plays
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As I said, they allow shots at a slightly worse than league average rate, so that's not it. The goalie is just stopping more of them. Unfortunately war on ice is gone so I can't tell you where the shots are coming from, but I can tell you that historically, when people raise that possibility, it turns out not to be the case. You can suppress total shots against - that is, strategy or talent can lead to the opposition getting relatively few pucks on your net - but of those shots that do get through, a certain percentage of them will consistently be from high quality locations, and the range of what percentage are from those locations doesn't vary all that much. That's the best I can do on that point.
Quote:
Originally Posted by diane_phaneuf
Not saying its the case here but saying it is solely a statistical anomaly (not that I am saying you are just in general) is just as lazy as the writer in this case saying its all due to system
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Yeah I'm not saying it's solely an anomaly - they might be an average team getting a huge dose of luck (which isn't uncommon at this point in the season; that's my explanation for the Blue Jackets' PP and on the flip side, the Blackhawks' PK). They might be an above average team getting a good run of luck. Or they might be easily the best PK team in the last decade. That last one seems like the least likely of the three.
My problem is hockey writers looking for outliers, and then trying to come up with a good story about why the outlier exists. The linked article actually contains some useful insights into how the penalty kill is run which would be cool to read without the dubious claims that we're watching some revolutionary new strategy that's going to change the way teams kill penalties. Not even acknowledging that the main driver of the PK% is an insane save percentage is doing a huge disservice to the reader.