Andrei Vasilevskiy played the sequence well. On Nov. 29, the Lightning netminder positioned his toes on the top of the crease, raised his glove hand and waited for Brandon Carlo’s point shot to arrive.
Two things made the sequence tricky, even for a goalie as accomplished as the two-time champion. The Bruin defenseman’s shot was rising. And there was traffic in front.
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As Vasilevskiy stretched out his blocker in anticipation of Carlo’s far-side shot, he also leaned to his right and started to drop into the butterfly. All these movements created openings: under the 6-foot-4, 220-pound goalie’s right arm, between his pads, next to his head.
Taylor Hall found one.
With a downward swipe of his blade, Hall redirected Carlo’s chest-level shot down and between Vasilevskiy’s pads for the Bruins’ first goal.
“Ideally, you want to tip the puck any way you can,” said Hall. “But if you can tip it back toward the net and down, you know that he’s sliding across. It was a perfect saucer pass toward the net that I had a really good view on. Just trying to tip it down and somewhere toward the middle of the net.”
When Carlo returned to the bench, he sat down next to Linus Ullmark, that night’s backup goalie. Ullmark told Carlo how mid-air deflections are far harder for a goalie to save than one tipped by an on-ice stick.
“Anything on the top half is really hard for a goalie to control,” Carlo recalled of Ullmark’s explanation. “The tip can go anywhere. So I would say definitely off the ice is kind of a goal when there’s a lot of traffic like that. If there’s times where you can do it on the ice, there’s opportunities for that as well. But yeah, top half of the net.”
Ullmark is correct. The numbers say so.
Stats are clear
According to Clear Sight Analytics, a mid-air all-situations deflection goes in 17.5 percent of the time. In comparison, an on-ice deflection only has a 3.2 percent chance of becoming a goal.
The latter, then, is a very stoppable shot for an NHL goalie.
“With the ice, you see the stick. It’s kind of presented,” said Golden Knights goalie Adin Hill, who is 6-foot-4 and 215 pounds. “You have low coverage with your pads already. So you’ve got your body in front of it. You can square up to where it’s getting tipped from. Most guys are going to try to change direction on the ice or get it up. If you keep your five-hole tight, you’re pretty much going to cover the lower part of the net.”
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The relatively routine manner of stopping an on-ice tip signals how goalies slam everything shut down low. If they see a puck skimming along the ice, they automatically go into the butterfly. Their pads and stick take care of everything down low. At the same time, goalies are taught to stay tall and square with their torsos.
So even if an attacker gets a stick on an on-ice shot, goalies will usually be in good shape to get in front of the deflection. The deflection, after all, can only go up.
“When it’s on the ice, the goalie’s probably already on his way down anyways,” Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy said. “So he’s taking away a lot of that low net. So you have to deflect it probably a little more accurately up top.”
Another explanation for the challenge of converting an on-ice deflection could be how it’s easier to defend. Coaches instruct defensemen to negate sticks in net-front situations. An attacking stick placed on the ice is easier to lift than one in the air.
“I think it’s always better to come up on the stick,” said Bruins defenseman Connor Clifton. “It’s kind of easy to just come under it.”
In comparison, an attacker can tip a mid-air puck up or down. This makes life brutal for goalies. First, they have to track the shooter’s release, typically through traffic. Second, they have to respect the initial shot. Third, they have to consider how the tipper might change the puck’s trajectory.
“On those mid-air ones, if the puck’s coming at your blocker hand, your blocker already has to be committed to saving that puck,” Hill explained. “Then if it changes any direction, it can go up, down, left, right. It’s more variable, right? It’s just more unpredictable.”
There is also the matter of a deflection not happening at all. Not every player has the hand-eye coordination to tip mid-air pucks regularly. This is also not easy for goalies to manage.
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“I’ve had it before in practice where a guy waves at a puck in the air going to your glove,” Hill said. “You’re expecting him to tip it. Then it beats you without tipping it. So you have to respect that shot. Because not every guy’s going to tip every puck. You have to play the puck. After the tip, you just hope you’re in the right position and you try and get a little reaction on it if you can. It’s just tough.”
All of this is proof that teams should be practicing a clear strategy: shoot high and send tip-ready reinforcements in front. Of course, it’s not as easy as it sounds.
Affecting strategy
It wasn’t long ago that defensemen from the point had time to wind up and pick their spots. Defending teams emphasized collapsing in the slot.
But the trend has moved toward all-ice pressure. Even if a checking forward doesn’t have time to bomb out to the point to contest the release, he is, at the very least, expected to occupy the shooting lane. Sometimes, then, a shooting defenseman’s priority is to send the puck on net at all costs — not necessarily to take the time to put it in the air.
The current wave of shot-ready defensemen, though, is well-equipped to optimize mid-air chances. Clifton cited Cale Makar and Adam Fox as the best at sifting dangerous shots through traffic for teammates to deflect. Because of his skill and hockey sense, Makar can usually decide whether a mid-air or on-ice shot gives the Avalanche the best chance to score.
For example, on Dec. 5 against the Flyers, Makar settled the puck at the point during a first-period power play. The defenseman read that Scott Laughton was hanging back instead of challenging him at the blue line. Meanwhile, Makar had two friendly sticks in his sightlines: J.T. Compher in the high slot, and Alex Newhook screening Carter Hart.
So Makar snapped a rising shot around Laughton and toward Newhook’s waist-level stick. Newhook tipped the shot down and past Hart’s glove. The goalie had no chance.
“No preference,” said the Colorado defenseman. “It just really depends on the tendencies of guys that are on the ice and where the game’s at.”
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Situational play may never eliminate the on-ice shot. But as more skilled shooters cycle through the NHL, more mid-air pucks will arrive. The math dictates the strategy.
“We want our defensemen to shoot the puck off the ice,” said Bruins coach Jim Montgomery. “You can shoot for a stick in the middle of the ice that might create a broken play. Broken plays go in at a 25 percent rate. Because goalies can’t anticipate broken plays. And by the time a broken play has happened in the slot, there’s bodies. There’s chaos. They’re trying to find pucks. That’s why they go in at a high rate. But how do you create a broken play? They’re hard to create. But if you have two on the inside, two forwards inside the dots and someone’s screening, that’s how you create offense.”
(Top photo of Hayden Hodgson tipping a shot on Ilya Sorokin: Bill Streicher / USA Today)