you were one of the people arguing with me about panarin this summer when i kept saying this is the player he is now, a guy that wont go to the house with any regularity.
i never said shooting percetage was better last year bc we drove the net. why is your thinking always this versus that: strome vs trocheck, this year vs last year. I am saying in GENERAL teams that drive the net are harder to play against and cause more chaos for a goalie to handle the save and subsequent rebound placement. That will NEVER show up in an analytic stat, and my point is just bc our CF% looks great and we are getting shots doesn't mean they are hard shots for the goalie or the opposition. Everyone knows what this team is going to do, half of hockey is establishing an elesiveness, deception, or chaos to prevent to opposition from just neutering your attack.
Kreider isnt going to those areas, people loved to kill vatrano but he did it all the time and has been replaced with kravtsov's ghost or whoever else they play out of position. Strome was terrible at it but he would go to the net on plays where as vinny appears to now want to stay higher up for skill plays. laffy is completely lost and isnt driving the net like he did before. not to mention the other replacement level player downgrades we have on the 4th line now or in reaves' case a player slipping further with age.
a deflection sure could happen if they were in the lane. a rebound goal off a post could happen if guys are driving to the net anticipating rebounds instead of standing still and waiting to see if a rebound pops out. it is all relative...
I kind of knew Panarin is the player he is but somebody has to score the goals. For all the complaining about Panarin and all the complaining about this team being unable to score, he has 22 points in 19 games. I get "hard to play against" but you also need skill to win. Beat the goalie from anywhere, cross-ice pass, perimeter ass skill. It's actually a good thing to have.
As far as the driving the net, we could talk about that, and argue, and conject, and agree, and disagree. That's fine. I get that part.
What I'm saying is, whether or not that's true, we're ALSO shooting in terrible luck. Both things can be true.
NHL teams don't shoot <8% unless they're just talentless or they had a bad run of luck. It's a stone cold fact that the Rangers are experiencing poor shooting luck. They didn't cause it and they can't solve it. It just is.
There are easy-to-spot eye-test examples of this. They beat Reimer clean at least five times the other night. They practically had a 65 minute powerplay against the Flyers and scored one goal. No amount of driving the net is going to make those chances fall when they're just not going. They were already great chances.