In the last 3 years, David Pastrnak has taken 274 shots from above the top of the face-off circles at 5-on-5. He has scored zero goals.

That’s the 6th most shots by any forward from this area, without scoring once. So, does it make sense for Pastrnak to be taking almost 30 percent of his shots from a goal scoring “dead zone”?

No, it does not.

I spent some of my summer working on a research project and I’m going to share the results here.

The question – Can players score more goals by shooting more efficiently? Short answer – Yes.

I’m convinced that if a player understands what he needs to do to become as optimal a shooter as possible, he can adjust his shooting habits and ultimately, produce more goals.

How many more goals would Pastrnak have scored had he shot less from the area that produced no results for him and instead looked to move the puck or get into a better shooting area? Granted, all players have different strengths and score in different ways so it’s not as simple as saying, “Hey, go plant yourself in-front of the net and take a bunch of ‘high-danger’ shots.” What works best for a player like Anders Lee might not necessarily work best for, say, Mat Barzal. That said, players can optimize their shooting habits and I’m going to present a few examples here that highlight the advantage of doing so.

What I’ll be highlighting is the importance of shooting from the areas players score from the most. Sounds simple, right? Well, even some of the best goal scorers in the game can benefit from becoming more optimal shooters. In this article, I’ll use Patrick Kane and Patrik Laine as examples of guys who score a lot but could likely score even more by tweaking a few things. I’ll also look at Auston Matthews, who has scored more 5-on-5 goals than anyone in the last 3 years, in part because he is a very optimal shooter – simply put, he takes a majority of his shots from places he can score from and doesn’t take many from ‘dead zones’ on the ice where he generally struggles to score.

Before sharing the results of my analysis, it’s important to highlight a few things: