The Sabres have a shooting accuracy problem. In January or immediately out of the COVID break, it might have been rust. In March, however, it’s worth a deep dive.

Since returning from their 10 day COVID absence, the Sabres have played 16 games. In only three of those games have they exceeded 30 shots on goal: 36 on February 22 against the Islanders, 37 on February 23 against the Devils (Also their most recent win), and 32 on February 25 against the Devils. 30 SOG (10 SOG per period) is an arbitrary marker, but at this point in the season, that mark is around the median number of shots on goal per game and symbolic of the team’s struggles to produce offensively in this stretch where they have only won a single game. A major part of why they’re struggling to reach these 30 shots on goal is because of how frequently they’re shooting wide.

What do we know about shot accuracy (from Moneypuck)?

As a refresher of the event variable in the Moneypuck shot dataset, SHOT represents shots that were saved, and MISS represents shots that missed the net. Just to check to make sure more shots aren’t missing the net more frequently league-wide, I separated this season’s shots through two months from the other seasons worth of shots and saw a non-substantial difference in any of the categories of shots.

From this initial glance, we can draw that the expectation is that between 72% and 73% of shots are on goal. Separating the shots down to the team and season level, we can gain an understanding of the range for the distribution of team shot on goal accuracy.

We see that a team for a whole season has never shot worse than two-thirds of their shots being on goal or better than four-fifth of their shots being on goal. With 424 observations (30 teams for 10 seasons, 31 teams for 4), we can estimate the true underlying distribution that exists for shot on goal percentage.

Mean	72.24%
Standard Deviation	1.65%
+ 1 SD	73.89%
-1 SD	70.59%
+2 SD	75.54%
-2 SD	68.94%

A mere 3.3% can separate the best and worst 5% of shooting teams from average in either direction. Only 1 extra shot of every 30, which suggests that over a full regular season, teams rarely shy away from that 72% average shot on goal percentage. 

The Sabres, meanwhile, miss the net 3% more frequently than the rest of the league this season with a shot on goal percentage of about 69.73% (missing the net on approximately 30.27% of their shots). This is approximately the 6th percentile, meaning that only between 6% and 7% of teams are less accurate than this based on this approximate distribution. 

So if 3% represents one extra shot of every 30 missing the net, that can’t be the full problem for the Sabres, can it? Do the problems go farther than that? (Of course they do)

Single Games (via Natural Stat Trick)

Through 26 games, the Sabres have only exceeded a 72% shot on goal percentage 10 times – less than 2 of every 5 games. During the 10 game losing streak, they’ve only exceeded that 72% mark twice. On opposite ends, they’ve been below the 5th percentile 12 times and above the 95th percentile 9 times, leaving only 5 games where they have been within two standard deviations of the average. There’s still more than half the season remaining of games to add to the full season sample, but nearly half of the games falling under 70% of shots on goal for a team that already generates the second fewest 5v5 shot attempts for per 60 is a recipe for the losses to continue to pile on. 

Game	Unblocked Shot Attempts (Fenwick)	Shots on Goal	Shot on Goal Percentage
2021-02-15 – Islanders 3, Sabres 1	32	21	65.6%
2021-02-16 – Islanders 3, Sabres 0	34	20	58.8%
2021-02-18 – Sabres 1, Capitals 3	38	23	60.5%
2021-02-20 – Sabres 3, Devils 2	41	29	70.7%
2021-02-22 – Sabres 2, Islanders 3	48	36	75.0%
2021-02-23 – Sabres 4, Devils 1	50	37	74.0%
2021-02-25 – Devils 4, Sabres 3	40	32	80.0%
2021-02-27 – Flyers 3, Sabres 0	37	23	62.2%
2021-02-28 – Flyers 3, Sabres 0	40	28	70.0%
2021-03-02 – Sabres 2, Rangers 3	44	24	54.5%
2021-03-04 – Sabres 2, Islanders 5	29	18	62.1%
2021-03-06 – Sabres 2, Islanders 5	37	22	59.5%
2021-03-07 – Sabres 2, Islanders 5	37	26	70.3%
2021-03-09 – Sabres 4, Flyers 5	26	20	76.9%
2021-03-11 – Penguins 5, Sabres 2	35	23	65.7%
2021-03-13 – Penguins 3, Sabres 0	36	24	66.7%

Expanding to Shots on Goal

Mean	6.60%
Standard Deviation	0.67%
+1 SD	7.27%
-1 SD	5.93%
+2 SD	5.26%
-2 SD	7.94%

When it comes to scoring, it gets worse. The Sabres 5.33% shooting percentage, second worst in the NHL, is in the 3rd percentile – only 3% of teams on the estimated distribution score on a lower percentage of goals than the 2021 Sabres have.

The struggle to get shots on goal certainly factors into why the shooting percentage is so low, but even when the shots reach the net, the goalie save percentage against the Sabres is a 0.923, which is the 94th percentile for opponent save percentage.

Mean	0.909
Standard Deviation	0.018
+1 SD	0.918
-1 SD	0.900
+2 SD	0.926
-2 SD	0.890

So the Sabres are one of the league’s worst teams at putting shots on goal and at getting them past the goalie. Is it bad luck? Is it bad shooting? Is it both?

Unlucky vs Bad Shooting

Certainly with the amount of posts being hit and the combined 10 goals below expectation at 5v5 for Hall, Skinner, and Eichel, the Sabres have sustained some brutal puck luck. However, the team’s devotion to point shots drives an emphasis on the shots that notoriously are blocked, shot wide, or easily saved the most frequently.

Take your pick for which of being unlucky vs being bad you want to choose to decipher why the Sabres cannot score this season (the answer is a little of both, but that’s boring), but with the low quality of the shots the Sabres are generating on a consistent basis, it puts more pressure on the few good shot opportunities to need to be goals so that they can stay competitive in games.

They’re reaping the scarce seeds that they are sowing.

Photo Credit: Timothy T. Ludwig-USA TODAY Sports