Columbus Blue Jackets

Which Blue Jackets could be in for shooting percentage regression?
June 7, 2017, 11:41 AM ET [2 Comments]
Paul Berthelot
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The Jackets off-season plan looks like it will be a quest to add more scoring to the team. The reason for this is because Jarmo Kekalainen pays plenty attention to shooting percentage and understands how volatile it can be year to year. As he said to Eliiotte Friedman in 30 Thoughts:

That led to an interesting conversation about shooting percentages, regression and how much he pays attention to it. The short answer: a lot.

“You know if someone is shooting 30 per cent, it’s hard to sustain that. We know that if a player had an unusually low number, there is a chance the next year he comes out of it. We go through an exercise where we predict how many goals we think we are going to score as a team next year. We look at every player.”


The Jackets scored an impressive 245 goals in all situations last season, on the back of a 9.67% shooting percentage, those ranked 6th and 7th in the league respectively. The Jackets of all teams know how much shooting percentage fluctuates year to year and how much of an impact it can have on a player and a season. Nick Folingo has been the poster boy for this over the past few years. Looking at the roster from last season the Jackets don’t have a player like Folingo who shot an unsustainable 17.0% in 2014-15. Players like Cam Atkinson and Josh Anderson both had very high percentages, whereas William Karlsson and Boone Jenner were very low. When you put everything together this might actually have been a team that underperformed and could be in for some positive regression next season.

At 5 on 5 the Jackets scored 168 goals, putting them sixth in the league, just one back of Toronto. They shot 8.18% which put them 10th. The reason they were able to score so many goals, was because they took a ton of shots. They did not have the best Corsi numbers with an average 50.29% per Natural Stat Trick. What they did very well at though was getting their shot attempts on net. Of their 3717 shot attempts, 2054 of them were on net for a percentage of 55.3%, above the league average of 53.5%. Those 2054 shots ranked third in the league.

Turning to expected goals, all those shots the Jackets took should have led to more than 168 goals. Based on the expected goal model from Corsica the Jackets at 5 on 5 should have been expected score 173.71 goals, 5.71 more than they actually scored.

Two of the biggest culprits for this were the aforementioned Boone Jenner and William Karlsson. Jenner had a disappointing year for those who thought he was going to repeat his 30 goal season. That wasn’t going to happen as he was never going to get the power play opportunities to do that. He ended up having a productive season scoring 14 goals at 5 on 5, placing him fourth on the team. Surprisingly that was an underperformance as he only shot 7.45% per Stats.HockeyAnalysis. His expected goals were 18.1, which is right in line with his 30 goal season when he scored 19 goals at 5 on 5. Karlsson was in a similar situation though not to the same extreme. He scored just five goals at 5 on 5, thanks to a 5.81 sh%, his expected goals however were 8.85. Other notables were Matt Calvert who also just scored five goals. His sh% was 6.49 and his expected goals were 9.09. If those three all performed up to what they were expected too, the Jackets would have had roughly an extra 12 goals.

At the other end of the spectrum the three players that over performed the most were Seth Jones, Josh Anderson and Scott Hartnell. Jones scored eight goals with a 6.9% shooting percentage. That is very high ranking 27th in the NHL among defencemen who played at least 300 5 on 5 minutes. His expected goals were 4.71. Jones is someone going forward you might expect to outperform his expected goals because of how smart he is on the ice. He takes chances offensively but only when the opportunity arises. He picks the right spots and with his high end talent level, he is someone who could maintain a higher shooting percentage over his career.

Anderson and Hartnell however are not likely to maintain their success. Anderson led the Jackets with a 13.68 sh% at 5 on 5 and Hartnell was closely behind him in fourth at 11.96%. Anderson was one of 46 players to score 16 goals at 5 on 5. His sh% ranked him 16th of that group. He was surrounded by names like Justin Williams, Auston Matthews, Chris Kreider, James Van Riemsdyk and Filip Forsberg. Of that group Anderson sticks out. These are all very talented players, who all play in the top six for their teams. Anderson is a fine player, but he is not a top six option and is not someone who will score at the rate of a top six option going forward. Anderson’s expected goals were 13.63 which is a much more realistic for him.

Hartnell was put lower in the line-up and given more offensive opportunities. Hartnell as he ages is losing foot speed which will hinder him moving forward. He still does a good job down low and getting to the net. That should help him continue to score goals, but just maybe not at the same rate. His expected goals were 8.77, which like Anderson is a good baseline as we move into next season.

For those interested here is the full chart of all the Blue Jacket players sorted by expected goals minus actual goals.