The Worst Shooters Among The Best Goal Scorers And Best Shooters Who Weren't Great Goal Scorers?

[DitchMarner]

Maybe Luc Robitaille for the former category? Not saying he was a bad shooter, but his scoring was more about instincts, anticipation, timing and going to the right areas than having a big shot or being a precision sniper. Possibly guys like Ciccarelli and Andreychuk as well (guys who feasted on garbage and were great at deflections). For a guy who has scored a ton of goals, Crosby's shot has never impressed me all that much. In his early years, I thought he had kind of a muffin shot.


Kessel was a very good but not quite great goal scorer in his prime. Somehow he never hit 40 goals in a season. Then again, he didn't have a great playmaker to set him up in Toronto, and while he had excellent snap and wrist shots, he hardly ever used his backhand and almost never took slapshots or one-timers.

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[MadLuke]

Marcel Dionne (someone with 730 goals....) in an interview said he did not had a goalscorer shot and had to create his goals a lot, could have been downplaying himself or just relative to the Lafleur-Bossy level of shots (that was a bit the sense it gave, that he had a shot below the greatest).

I remember Pierre Dagenais having quite the shots in a vaccum and could score a lot in the Q, AHL, Europe. Was harder in the nhl (outside the shootout), he has youtube goals montage without scoring 40 goals in that league.

 

[seventieslord]

Isn't Gretzky the answer here? The discrepancy between how did he was at scoring goals and how good he was at shooting, is probably the highest ever.

 

[Matsun]

Laine has a fantastic shot but isn’t a great goal scprer anymore.

 

[JackSlater]

Can't argue with the names listed so far. Pavel Brendl had a great shot but... yeah the rest did not work out.

 

[Dingo]

Semin is another

but ya, Gretzky to Brendl might actually cover the spectrum.

 

[Midnight Judges]

There have been lots of defensemen who had high velocity shots but didn't accumulate high goal totals. For example, Dmitry Orlov can bomb it but that is not his primary role.

 

[DitchMarner]

Isn't Gretzky the answer here? The discrepancy between how did he was at scoring goals and how good he was at shooting, is probably the highest ever.

I feel like he had a fairly good shot for his era (in his prime). It probably wouldn't have allowed him to score prolifically during the Dead Puck Era (among others), but he could beat goaltenders from a distance in the 80s. He had good accuracy, and watching clips from that time period, his shot doesn't stand out as particularly weak for the period (to me anyway).

I did mention Crosby in the OP, and he has good accuracy as well. I guess it's just that he looked worse in terms of velocity (and maybe release) relative to guys like Iginla, Kovalchuk and Ovechkin in the 2000s than Gretzky did in comparison to guys like Dionne, Bossy and Savard. Crosby has improved his shot since those early years, though.

 

[Michael Farkas]

McDavid, sort of like Crosby, kinda "chose" (for lack of a better term, but there was a clear change in their games) to score a bunch of goals one year. Not the best shooter. He has hands in close (while Crosby is incredible at deflections), but in terms of shooting - that's not McDavid's biggest strength. Like when Crosby was bet to lead the league in goals, McDavid had a "be more selfish" year and then dunked on the league for 60+.

Gretzky has that half slapper, and it's not like he can't shoot...but he's a good answer here relative to 894 number.

 

[jigglysquishy]

Sakic had a tremendous shot for someone who only finished top 5 in goals twice. He put up 600 goals and had two tremendous goal scoring playoffs. But was never a consistent threat to lead the league in goals.

 

[overpass]

Bryan Trottier didn't have a great shot, but he had 50, 47, and 46 goal seasons. And in his seven seasons centering Mike Bossy (77-78 to 83-84) he had a 22% shooting percentage.

 

[MadLuke]

With Gretzky he did shot 22.8% 81 to 85, 20.5% from 81 to 91, can you have one of the best shooting percentage while leading the league in shot taken without a great shot ? 20.5% that exactly what Lemieux-Bossy did during that time, he had quite that good slapshot and a lot of his career goals where from a good distance, beating goaltender clean without them being obstructed or from a one timer broken play.

Forsberg and Datsyuk had solid shot relative to their goal output.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

i guess it depends on how we define great shot? robitaille is often thought of as a crease guy but he had excellent hand eye coordination (ie, the source of the lucky nickname) and could get a shot off quickly and accurately in tight and difficult situations. so a great shot in a sense, but not like a joe sakic or alex mogilny beat you clean with a wrister-type great shot.

gretzky, that slapper feels like an all time shot to me, in terms of always being able to pick the corner, how fast he got it off, he he could get if off against the grain of his movement while button hooking or going east-west. comparable to bure or gaborik firing a wrister mid-stride, just more ugly.

but a true crease guy like pavelski or, not elite but andrew brunette (or one of my faves, greg adams), those guys did not really have good shots but scored a lot of goals on positioning, timing, and hand eye coordination.

 

[The Panther]

Ryan Smyth. Worst shot ever.

 

[tabness]

First name that pops into mind is Petr Nedved. Later in the nineties with the reputation gained through his own superstar status and the Avalanche success, everyone was saying Sakic had the best wrist shot in the game, but I think Nedved's was even better. His wrist shot was absolutely beautiful, one of those you watched just to take in the form so you could practice it. But like Semin, his stats are nowhere near what you'd expect from that kind of shot. Was surprised he didn't get 50 even on the 1995-1996 Penguins and the way they played, guess it was too much finishing from Jagr and Lemieux.



(sorry about the wack beat for this montage lol)

Lots of European trained centers coming in during the eighties and nineties who were just too pass first seemed to have underutilized great shots, not Nedved level but like I'm thinking Forsberg who topped out at 30 only with his shot, or Bengt Ake Gustafsson before him in the eighties.

On the Wings this was also a thing. Everyone remembers Fedorov's shot arsenal especially that slapshot, wasn't giving up much to Mogilny and Bure, but he only scored 50 once. Then after him, Datsyuk had such a nice selection of shots, his release from in close after he did his dekes was always super satisfying but was never getting the big numbers. Obviously a big part of that was team style and their roles though. Even Robert Lang, dude had such a nice release, and it was always fun to watch with his gumpy stride and lazy look, he'd look somewhat awkward getting it off, but it was an absolute great shot, just a bit behind his countryman Nedved. He only started shooting late in his already late to blossom career, classically Euro trained centerman he was.

Pat LaFontaine in terms of "worst" shooters given great goal scorers (even though it's a bit of a stretch because his shot was absolutely fine) because of his lack of size and strength, his shot wasn't at the insane level of his other superlative finesse skills, and he didn't have to use it much to continue scoring like crazy even on the man on the island days on the late eighties Islanders. Like McDavid in his one big scoring year, he just always had the puck, made the play, and drove to the net (although it was much harder to do that back in his day). Even though his most famous goal is the easter epic long slapper, seems like most of his many goals were in/right outside the crease.

 

[Albatros]

Tomas Holmström had a 30-goal season and scored nearly as many goals (172 in 582) after his 30th birthday as Wayne Gretzky (188 in 592) without really shooting the puck much at all.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

First name that pops into mind is Petr Nedved. Later in the nineties with the reputation gained through his own superstar status and the Avalanche success, everyone was saying Sakic had the best wrist shot in the game, but I think Nedved's was even better. His wrist shot was absolutely beautiful, one of those you watched just to take in the form so you could practice it. But like Semin, his stats are nowhere near what you'd expect from that kind of shot. Was surprised he didn't get 50 even on the 1995-1996 Penguins and the way they played, guess it was too much finishing from Jagr and Lemieux.

nedved and kovalev always go together in my mind. both had massive outlying career highs on the penguins aided by other stars, but each also was at his actual best later on, nedved with the rangers and kovalev with the habs.

nedved didn’t have people drooling over his skill in the same way as kovalev but he was skilled: ridiculous wrist shot as you say, had dangles, size, and unlike kovalev had playmaking ability that at times looked elite. but like kovalev the sum total of his skills dwarfed the overall effectiveness of the player he actually was.

 

[Dissonance Jr]

For a guy who was top-10 in goals four times, Rick Nash always struck me as a relatively weak shooter. Later in his career with the Rangers especially he had a real muffin of a slapshot. But he had incredible hands and was constantly stickhandling and poke-checking pucks right into the net.

 

[Sadekuuro]

Datsyuk had solid shot relative to their goal output.

I thought of Datsyuk too, his wrister and backhand were both top tier but he never wanted to shoot.

 

[The Panther]

Esa Tikkanen had a really great shot, and from all areas -- he had an awesome distance slapper (sometimes played point on the PP), he was good from regular net-front, and he was fabulous at deking and when one-one-one with goalies. Despite this (and two seasons with prime Gretzky), he never scored more than 34 goals in a season (and during that season, he shot at a staggering 27% success rate!).

 

[Nerowoy nora tolad]

We rarely use the term underrated about Gretzky, but honestly I think his shot is underrated. Having a slapper that is pinpoint accurate is pretty rare, and the velocity was pretty heavy for a guy we dont usually associate with raw power and strength. He also built a lot of complicated fakes and deception into it like the half windup pause that made it so difficult for goalies to get properly set for the shot.

I wonder if the distance in time from his prime years has made people forget how dangerous that slapper was. A lot of what made him a nightmare to defend against pre-Suter hit was that he wasnt just this clever playmaker whod outfox you with passes, if your defenders all collapsed to take his pass options away, hed beat the goalie from above the circles with how good his slapshot was.

 

[tabness]

Esa Tikkanen had a really great shot, and from all areas -- he had an awesome distance slapper (sometimes played point on the PP), he was good from regular net-front, and he was fabulous at deking and when one-one-one with goalies. Despite this (and two seasons with prime Gretzky), he never scored more than 34 goals in a season (and during that season, he shot at a staggering 27% success rate!).

Tikkanen in general had finesse skills that belied his stats, much of that was his role of course, part of it was that he just seemed to rather be a pest than a scorer. The Hockey Scouting Reports would say he could have been a 50 goal guy if he focused on it.