Blocked shots in the NHL: Do some teams get their shots blocked more often than others?

[Poiquets]

Hello,

Yesterday I started to wonder whether some teams in the NHL might get their shots blocked more often than others due to their style of play. Do any teams teams come to mind?

Hypothesis A: An intuitive perspective could be to look at it this way: The teams that shoot the most get more shots blocked when considered in absolute terms.

Hypothesis B: Another idea could be that there is a causality between shots on goal and shots that got blocked: The teams that have the lowest shots on goal average, might have it because many of their shots got blocked.

I went to Evolving-Hockey and I visualized the "Shots for" and "Shots that got blocked" (Corsi For - Fenwick For) data for the NHL season 2019-2020: View attachment 316889


It can be seen that there is a positive relationship between the amount of Shots on goal and the amount of shots that got blocked, so Hypothesis B can now be dismissed.

Some interesting cases arise: could it be that Sharks, Stars and Blackhawks shoot relatively more often at the opposing D-man than others for an underlying reason or is it just noise in the sample? On the other hand, do the Blue Jackets build up their plays in such manner that there aren't dmen between the shooter and the opposing goalie as often as in the case of some other teams? Any opinions from those who watch a lot of games would be appreciated.


Another graph shows the Fenwick shots for vs shots that got blocked:
View attachment 316887



This graph, as well, shows that the more shots you have in general, the more shots will get blocked.

What would be your main findings from graphs like these and most importantly; do you believe that there are underlying reasons for the differences between the relative frequencies of shots getting blocked or are they just due to randomness?

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[morehockeystats]

It's definitely necessary to compare Fenwick and not just shots. Missed shots have the same chance of getting blocked in the first place.

I would dip next into the analysis of:
* Shot locations
* Shot percentages of D/F
The Sharks supposedly get a lot of shot attempts from Burns and Karlsson, Dallas - from Klingberg, Heiskanen and Lindell.

 

[Poiquets]

Thanks for your insight, morehockeystats! Now that you said it, it makes a lot of sense to use the Fenwick instead of SF.

The suggestion you gave about shot percentages of D/F sounds like an interesting one and should not be too tedious one to look at.

So does the one about shot locations. I’m just not sure what would be the most efficient way to research that and how to allocate the results to different teams. Is there a database of some kind for the shot locations?

 

[OvermanKingGainer]

It's definitely necessary to compare Fenwick and not just shots. Missed shots have the same chance of getting blocked in the first place.

One flaw to this is that trying to not get a shot blocked may cause a shot attempt to miss the target.

 

[CDN24]

One flaw to this is that trying to not get a shot blocked may cause a shot attempt to miss the target.

Might be better to look at Road stats only. Sometimes the local stat keeper can define things differently on more subjective stats like turnovers and blocked shots. all stats below are CF - FF per 60 5-5

Looking at YTD data for all teams it seems that there is more variability in the home stats vs road. Home you have buffalo with a low of 9.5 blocked against per 60 min up to Mtl at 17.8. Road the low is Ottawa at 11.4 to Mtl at 15.3.
Most teams the home/road number is similar (road a bit lower as road team shoots a bit less) but there are some outliers
Buffalo 9.5 blocked against vs 13.3 blocked on the road. almost 4 less blocks per 60 at home
Dallas 16.9/60 at home vs 12.3 on the road. more than 4 more at home
Hawks 17.3 at home vs 13.0 on road

Looks like Buffalo stats guy is reluctant to award a BS while Dallas is trigger happy. Would be nice to be able to isolate Road teams stats in those cities