Comments / New

The Winnipeg Jets and Missed Shots League-Wide

This comes from a couple of points made by Alex Hemsky (comment here, and post here), where we discussed the possibility that the Jets might be missing a lot of shots (and consequently playing better than regular shot on-goal totals). It’s not an out-there suggestion; we inherited an Atlanta Thrashers team that had a lot of shots taken by defencemen in 2010-11 (33.6%, the highest percentage since the 2002-03 Colorado Avalanche’s 33.9%), and it played a part in the team coming in 4th in the league in road missed shots despite ranking only 16th in road shots-for. Note: I use road data to avoid potential home scorer’s bias. I think just about any fan thinks their team misses a lot of shots or gets a lot of shots blocked, but have the misses continued to plague us this year?

First of all, we still have a fairly high amount of our shots taken by defencemen, at 29.6% (considerably higher than the league average the past five years, 25.7%). I would forward that part of the reason we are south of 30% could likely be due to losing Dustin Byfuglien for about a month, as he was a big part (pun intended) of the defensive shooting last year. As for the Winnipeg rank in road missed shots:

Team M/G
Boston Bruins 13.26
Ottawa Senators 12.48
Winnipeg Jets 12.45
San Jose Sharks 12.35
Pittsburgh Penguins 12.28
Detroit Red Wings 12.19
St. Louis Blues 12.18
Vancouver Canucks 12.15
Washington Capitals 11.77
Chicago Blackhawks 11.75
Phoenix Coyotes 11.63
Tampa Bay Lightning 11.56
Philadelphia Flyers 11.54
Carolina Hurricanes 11.44
Los Angeles Kings 11.26
Columbus Blue Jackets 11.07
Colorado Avalanche 11.04
Montreal Canadiens 10.84
Edmonton Oilers 10.81
New Jersey Devils 10.81
Dallas Stars 10.80
Toronto Maple Leafs 10.72
Anaheim Ducks 10.65
New York Islanders 10.50
Buffalo Sabres 10.42
New York Rangers 10.41
Minnesota Wild 10.38
Florida Panthers 10.31
Nashville Predators 9.54
Calgary Flames 8.90

Well, that's pretty high. The interesting thing here is that this is partly on the forwards, since Bustin was gone for so many of our road games in January. How about our road shots-for:

Team SF/G
Pittsburgh Penguins 33.9
Chicago Blackhawks 32.8
Detroit Red Wings 32.5
San Jose Sharks 32.2
Boston Bruins 30.7
Los Angeles Kings 30.7
Vancouver Canucks 30.6
Ottawa Senators 30.3
St. Louis Blues 30.2
Philadelphia Flyers 29.9
Colorado Avalanche 29.4
Columbus Blue Jackets 29.2
Carolina Hurricanes 29.1
Montreal Canadiens 28.4
Phoenix Coyotes 28.3
Tampa Bay Lightning 28.1
Winnipeg Jets 28.1
Washington Capitals 28.0
New York Islanders 28.0
New Jersey Devils 27.7
Florida Panthers 27.7
Minnnesota Wild 27.4
Toronto Maple Leafs 27.3
Buffalo Sabres 27.0
Dallas Stars 26.8
Nashville Predators 26.3
Calgary Flames 26.2
New York Rangers 26.1
Edmonton Oilers 25.0
Anaheim Ducks 24.6

Boy, 3rd in road missed shots and 17th in road shots-for sounds awfully familiar. Revisiting Alex’s post, let’s recall that Bustin is far from the worst offender here; he and Tobias Enstrom are the best defencemen for hitting the net (which makes sense). So…forwards having trouble hitting the net, defencemen having trouble hitting the net – shooting clinic anyone?

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