It is expected of fans to have strong feelings about certain aspects of the game, just based on watching and following the sport over long periods of time. Personally, I have always felt strongest about power play concepts, and maybe the biggest and strongest of my convictions has regarded positioning on the power play.

At even-strength, the majority of NHL wingers and defensemen play their strong sides. That is, if they are right-handed they play right wing or right defense, and vice versa. This is done for a variety of reasons, but the biggest among them are the facts that a) it is easier to protect the puck when it is to the outside of one’s body, considering defenders position themselves between the player and the net, b) it is more comfortable to take a puck off the wall and make a successful play on one’s forehand, and thus on one’s strong side, and c) it is less awkward defending on the strong side largely because of the resting position of one’s stick. There are disadvantages to this tendency though, the major one being that shooting from one’s strong side leads to a weaker shooting angle towards the net.

Strong puck handlers often prefer to play their off-wings because they want those stronger angles, and are good enough at stickhandling that they can get away with the puck being closer to the opposition’s waiting stick.

On the power play, besides simply shooting at a better angle, playing one’s off-wing allows players to one-time pucks towards the net, which is a huge advantage considering the importance of pre-shot movement and forcing the goalie to shift laterally prior to a chance. On the flip side, the inherent disadvantages to playing one’s off-wing all but disappear when up a man. Defense is a secondary consideration on the power play, the puck should be on the boards as little as possible, and with five players against four, there is more space to stickhandle and step into a shot without the danger of a turnover.

Despite all this, and admittedly sometimes because of a handedness imbalance in team lineups, coaches continue to deploy some players on their strong sides on the power play, or at the very least promote fluid systems that lead to shots from the strong side at bad angles with little pre-shot movement.

Since the lost season, there have been 100,291 NHL 5-on-4 shots attempted from a player’s off-wing, and 82,751 attempted from his strong side. That’s more than 45 percent of shots taken from the lesser shooting angle. Of course, we don’t know exactly how successful shooting from each side is, or what kind of impact that might have on total shots taken or overall power play success. Matt Cane found a while back that at 5-on-5, only certain kinds of shots — scoring chances mostly — registered at a higher percentage on one’s off-wing.

I will note here before I go any further that I haven’t included backhands, deflections, or other types of shot attempts that wouldn’t accurately reflect the principles of my hypothesis that shots from one’s off-wing go for a higher percentage.

I separated the 183,042 5-on-4 shot attempts by whether they were taken on a player’s strong or off-wing, as well as whether they were taken by a forward or defenseman, and whether they were in the scoring chance home plate area or not. I then looked at the Corsi shooting percentage in each of those bins.