I've been meaning to look at Goldobin's shot data for some time now.
So, first of all, he misses the net very consistently on 30% of his shot attempts:
Season | Shots | Shots Missed | |
20152016 | 16 | 6 | 38% |
20162017 | 28 | 9 | 32% |
20172018 | 96 | 29 | 30% |
20182019 | 145 | 44 | 30% |
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This rates him among the highest in the league this season:
Player | Shots | Missed | |
CONNOR BROWN | 125 | 44 | 35% |
MARK BOROWIECKI | 108 | 38 | 35% |
CAL CLUTTERBUCK | 129 | 41 | 32% |
NICK RITCHIE | 123 | 39 | 32% |
PAR LINDHOLM | 131 | 41 | 31% |
NIKOLAY GOLDOBIN | 145 | 44 | 30% |
JOHAN LARSSON | 119 | 35 | 29% |
SHEA WEBER | 198 | 57 | 29% |
NAZEM KADRI | 292 | 84 | 29% |
MARK JANKOWSKI | 133 | 38 | 29% |
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So, what's the deal?
One thing that I notice is that very few of Goldobin's shots get blocked. He tends to get his shots through, and the list above changes if you remove blocked shots. I am also going to remove defenders who take a lot of point shots (more on that later):
Player | Unblocked Shots | Missed | |
CONNOR BROWN | 106 | 44 | 42% |
PAR LINDHOLM | 101 | 41 | 41% |
CAL CLUTTERBUCK | 103 | 41 | 40% |
NICK RITCHIE | 103 | 39 | 38% |
NAZEM KADRI | 235 | 84 | 36% |
MARK JANKOWSKI | 110 | 38 | 35% |
VINCENT TROCHECK | 125 | 43 | 34% |
NIKOLAY GOLDOBIN | 128 | 44 | 34% |
COLIN WHITE | 146 | 50 | 34% |
ALEX OVECHKIN | 356 | 121 | 34% |
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Interesting mix of players here. Goldy misses as often as Ovechkin does, but of course takes far, far fewer shots. So let's have a look at the distance where they are taking their shots.
View attachment 189685
I limited the above data to shots taken within the offensive zone, with a goalie in net. You can see that as expected, there is a stark increase in how often a player misses the net as they get further and further away, up until about 18 feet. Then it starts to level off, with all shots that are 20-50 feet out missing about 30% of the time.
OK, so what about Goldobin?
I had to break the distances into 5-foot groups in this case (e.g. collapsing 10-14 feet into one data point,) here is the NHL at each 5-foot group compared to Goldy:
View attachment 190089
So you can see that he actually is just like anyone else when within 10 feet of the net, but once he gets 10+ feet out, he starts missing his shots significantly more often than the typical player.
Maybe nothing too surprising here, but I thought some might enjoy seeing the data.