Jack Eichel is among three or four Buffalo Sabres forwards that are going through a terrible run of bad shooting luck. I went into this expecting to see data that matched what my eyes were telling me when I watched the games.

I felt as though Eichel was missing the net more than he was last season, not getting to quality areas, and shooting less overall. Well, it turns out that I was wrong on all accounts in comparison to last season.

Now, in most cases when the data doesn’t back up a theory I shake my fist in the air and go open a bottle of Tito’s. I didn’t do that this time because I thought what I discovered was interesting and other people probably have the same misconception of his game that I had.

5 on 5 Shooting

I went back and looked at his shooting data this season against the rest of Eichel’s career. I wanted to look into three things:

1. Is he shooting less?
2. Is he shooting less accurately?
3. Is he still getting quality shots off?

I also broke the shooting data out into 5 on 5 and power play buckets. It was important for me to separate the two because they’re different game states and the 5 on 5 scoring is the biggest issue on the club right now.

Eichel has a dangerous shot and if he’s not using it that doesn’t help his team. I felt as though he wasn’t shooting enough and as a result, it was impacting his production. It would make sense if he was trying to be more of a playmaker with a new linemate in Taylor Hall for most of the season.

As you can see above, compared to last year, he’s not shooting less. In fact, he’s taking shots at a considerably higher rate per 60 minutes. At the same time, this is the third-lowest shooting rate of his career.

In theory, you’d like to say he should shoot a little more. However, taking more shots from poor shooting areas is counter-productive. Now, a player like Eichel can survive with lower quality shooting than other players because of his shooting talent. Either way, the next piece I need to know here is if he’s taking quality shots still or settling for poor opportunities.

That could help me make sense of him shooting more than last season, but it’s not making a difference because it’s a lower quality of shot per attempt.

This is the data set that got me. He’s taking the highest quality of shot per attempt in his career at 5 on 5 this season. Another data point that tells you how wild this shooting slump is. A talented player like Eichel is shooting more than last season, at a higher quality of shot per attempt, and the puck isn’t going in.

The next place I went to is perhaps he’s not shooting accurately. He’s getting quality shot attempts off, but he’s missing the net and that’s playing a role here.

Once again, not the result I expected. He is shooting more accurately at 5 on 5 than last season. However, it should be noted that this is the third-lowest accuracy percentage of his career. Therefore shooting accuracy could still be a slight issue here.

I had another thought cross my mind at this point. Perhaps, he’s getting more shots blocked per attempt.

Nope, not the case. In fact, this season he has had the lowest percentage of shots per attempt blocked in his career. So, he’s getting his to the net at least.

Power Play

After going through all of this I was curious if the power play was telling a similar story to what we just went through at 5 on 5. I went through the same data sets and adjusted the game state. We’ll see some different results here.

Eichel is shooting less per 60 minutes on the power play, but this is year five of a trend. What we may be seeing here is Eichel going from the main focus of the power play to that shifting to another player such as Victor Olofsson. It makes perfect sense when you think of how the Sabres power play finds success in most situations. They move the puck around to an open Olofsson in most cases and he buries the puck.

As such, I don’t see a need to be concerned about this. Especially when you consider the chart above. He may be shooting less on the power play, but he’s taking a higher quality of shot per attempt. This means he’s not forcing shots and taking them when the right opportunity opens up. That’s good for the man advantage moving forward.

In the data set above looking at accuracy on the power play we see our first “concern” in Eichel’s shooting. He’s missing the net at a much higher rate than he has the past two years. If he can turn this around it’ll help him throw up more goals in the box score and make the Sabres power play even more dangerous.

Conclusion

What all of this shooting data tells us is that Eichel is still doing the necessary things to produce. He’s shooting at a good rate, accurately, and from quality scoring areas. Just saying it’s bad luck isn’t a solution that some people want to hear, but that’s what we have here.

According to Evolving Hockey’s model, he’s shooting two goals below expected this season in all situations. He may have outperformed expectation to an unsustainable standard last season, but he has been an above-expectation shooter his entire career.

That doesn’t just stop at 24-years-old. What we have to hope is we don’t have some kind of weird outlier season when the Sabres can’t afford it if they want to be a playoff team.

All the data points we looked at tell us there’s a positive regression coming for Eichel. The ultimate twist of irony we’re seeing play out through 12 games is that his impacts are outperforming what we saw last year when he received Hart votes as you’ll see below in the twins’ RAPM model.

If the puck was just going in for him he’d be in the MVP conversation once again. If he can keep up this level of play and gets the shooting correction; the Sabres should be in good shape to start picking up points in the standings.

Data via: Evolving Hockey

Photo Credit: Patrick McDermott/NHLI via Getty Images