The Athletic journalist Dom Luszczyszyn crunched the data recently released by the NHL, highlighting some interesting facts on goalies, that they tend to be beaten more often from the right side of the ice (their glove side for right-handed goalies).
This popped up some insights we ourselves gathered along our years of data tracking in Switzerland, where we also provide scouting reports on goalies, studying that kind of things.
Last Summer, we wrote down some insights data could tell us about the game’s biggest trends, including goalies of course. Looking at 5,300 goals scored in National League the past three seasons, we wanted to see where the goals came from, where the goalies were beaten, etc.
At 5v5, 67% of goals were scored above the level of the pads, with the top left corner (glove side for most goalies) being the primary target with 21% of the goals, versus 15% on high blocker side.
On the power-play, the top glove side is again the primary target with 23% of pucks entering the net there.
What about 1v1, breakaways? The soft spot on high glove is even bigger with 28% of goals ending on the top glove side, almost twice as many than on the high blocker side.
So, yes, goalies allow more goals on their glove side. But why?
The common theory is simply linked to physical attributes, as stated by Substack superstar Jack Han yesterday on that Twitter thread:
What it means is: you have more left-handed shooters playing on the right wing, where their stick will be oriented towards the center of the ice, giving them a wider angle for shooting, much like when, on the power-play, triggermen like Alex Ovechkin play on their off-wing in order to blast one-timers.
So can we see correlations between where the shot was located on the ice and where the puck went in?
The visual below presents the shot location of goals based on where the puck went in. Five-hole goals mostly came from shots facing the net. Ice-level goals are vastly coming from very close shots.
We also can clearly see a preference for short side shots for top corner and mid-high goals as well as how Top left (glove side) goals come from all over the homeplate, when Top right (blocker side) goals are coming from closer.
If you are on your off-wing, with the blade of your stick facing the inside of the ice, it is simply easier to go pick the top short side as you have a wider angle. We also see on the maps the point where the lack of angle for aiming the far side becomes simply impossible.
Do we have a definite answer? No. But it clearly seems that a majority of right handed goalies facing a majority of shooters playing left handed creates a disadvantage from certain areas of the ice.
Goalies also simply have two different pieces of equipment between the blocker and the catching glove, resulting in different reaction time, different abilities to make a stop, and making different kind of stops. So the very comparison of left side vs right side is not fair by nature.
Finally, let’s not forget 1v1 goals where top glove side are predominant, as they represent a big share of all goals scored (39% of 5v5 goals in Switzerland last season).
No I’m sure you all will be watching where shots aim at in the next few games haha.
Is the distribution of goals scored by area of the net impacted by the percentage of shots towards that area? I would hypothesize that shooters would have a bias to shooting to the side of the net that they can see better, i.e. lefties shooting right side and righties shooting left side. Therefore with a higher number of left handed shooters, there would hypothetically more shots to the right hand side of the net which could explain why more goals are scored there.