I thought it might be interesting to look at the shots Boeser has taken this year vs. last year.
First, last year:
Compared to this season:
It's a lot to look at, but what stands out to me is that more of his shots this season are coming from the right side. Rather than getting shots off from the "Ovechkin spot" on the PP like he did last year, he is shooting from everywhere this season.
Not sure what I mean? Here, let me use my elite MS Paint skills:
Last year, Boeser took pretty much 60% of his shots, and scored 60% of his goals, from this box:
2017-18 | | BZ | BZ% | OBZ |
Goals | 29 | 17 | 59% | 12 |
SOG | 180 | 102 | 57% | 78 |
SAT | 253 | 141 | 56% | 112 |
SPCt | 16% | 17% | | 15% |
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This season it has been a little different:
2018-19 | | BZ | BZ% | OBZ |
Goals | 21 | 7 | 33% | 14 |
SOG | 160 | 69 | 43% | 91 |
SAT | 253 | 118 | 47% | 135 |
SPCt | 13% | 10% | | 15% |
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Two things are different:
1) He is down from 57% of his shots within that box, to 43%
2) His shooting pct from that area of the ice is down from 17% to 10%
His shooting pct from all other areas is the same as last year, the league standard 15%, but he is neither getting as many shots off from that spot nor converting on the ones he does get. All of this we have pretty much have observed and is present in the 3 PP goals he has this season compared to 10 last year.
One more thing: I thought about looking at the same X-Y data but by shot type instead of result. This is just shots on goal because NHL doesn't record it for other attempts.
Also, let's just look at slap shots and writers, since nobody cares about backhanders and deflections, etc.
Again, this isn't too surprising. When he's on that left side above the circle he winds up for one timers, but everywhere else he prefers to take a wrist shot and he scores more goals on that shot.
Has that changed this season?
His slap shots on the left side have been all from basically the exact same spot, whereas last year they were spread out more. Is that what people mean by "too stationary" on the PP? His scoring rate isn't much changed though and it's clear that his overall strategy is wrist-shots in close and when further away, bombs away.
AAAAAnyway, just thought that might be fun for some people to look at.