Sam Reinhart (2024) and crazy shooting-% improvements

[The Panther]

We all know Florida's Sam Reinhart has just had a career season with 57 goals, second best in the NHL. At 27-28, he was a bit older than most peak-season goal scorers, but whatever, that happens sometimes.

But what jumps out is Reinhart's crazy good shooting percentage this season -- 24.5%, best in the NHL. That's really great in itself, but what's amazing is that Reinhart shot 13.7% last year, meaning he nearly doubled his shooting percentage in one season. It's his ninth full season, so it's not like he's just learning his trade.

A lot of this will have to do with linemates, deployment, PP time, etc. But no matter how you slice it, I can't imagine there are too many cases in history of a given player improving that much from one season to the next. The standards here are:
-- player is past his 3rd or 4th full season in the League
-- player is on the same club as the previous year
-- player improves in shooting by 44% from one season to the next

Has anybody else done that?

Click to read more...

 

[GlitchMarner]

Kreider is the first name that came to mind.

In 2022 he shot at 20.2%. But that was only a marginal improvement over the previous year (19.6%).

His career average is 15.1%. He shot 25% above that in 2022.

 

[MadLuke]

Famously William Karlsson 43 goals season.

Short career 7.7% before that season , 10.3-8.3-6.3%
2017-2018: 23.4% more than tripled the previous season/career average, did lead the league, since he did shot for a good but normal 12.3%

This year he did shoot 17.1% putting a nice 30 goals, last 2 years it was under 9% for 12 and 14 goals seasons.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Since we're expressing the delta of percentages as a percentage...I think you'll have more results than you think...

For instance...

Chris Kunitz
2010 Penguins: 9.9
2011 Penguins: 17.3
2012 Penguins: 11.3
2013 Penguins: 19.5

 

[MadLuke]

Ribeiro once had a 25% season in Dallas (sandwich between a 16.2% and 13.5% season.

First season the younger Kostityn was out of Montreal he shot 25% (after 10.8% and 11.9%) season, having a 25 goal season in a very low scoring league.

 

[Steven Toast]

Draisaitl had a career worst (minus a rookie year with 4th line deployment) s% of 12.9% in 2018. Followed by a career best of 21.6% in 2019. An assumed anomaly at the time, but he has shot 19.7% in 5 seasons since.

 

[Dissonance Jr]

Vic Hadfield was a career ~10% shooter who suddenly put up a 20.7% at the age of 30 in 1971-72.

His linemate Jean Ratelle also rocketed up to 25% that season. Without looking too deeply, I’m guessing some combination of expansion effects plus great linemate chemistry.