Nino Niederreiter, Jason Zucker Minnesota Wild 40-Goal Scorers
Nino Niederreiter and Jason Zucker currently lead the Wild with 11 and 10 goals respectively. Up until a couple of games ago, Niederreiter was on pace to break 40 goals this season. He’s currently on pace to hit 38 and Zucker’s on pace to hit 34.
Even breaking 30 is a major season for almost any player this side of Steven Stamkos or Alex Ovechkin. For either Niederreiter or Zucker, it would be a statement that they’ve truly arrived as an offensive force. Niederreiter set his career mark in goals last season when he scored 14. Over the course of parts of three previous season Zucker has accumulated eight total goals.
This is already a big year for each of these forwards. But could they hit 30 or even 40 goals?
My gut says that’s a pretty crazy leap forward for them. It’s possible, but even cracking 20 would be a statement.
Let’s take a look a few things guys who are breaking those marks are doing consistently.
Shots vs. Shooting Percentage
This will shock you, but guys who break 40 goals tend to be pretty good. They tend to be able to maintain a higher shooting percentage than league average.
Over the last seven seasons (using a projected pace for 40 goals in the lockout season) 26 players have broken 40 goals. Eight players have done it more than once, for a total of 41 instances of a player hitting or breaking the 40-goal mark in a single season. (Those eight players are Steven Stamkos, Ilya Kovalchuk, Alex Ovechkin, Corey Perry, Jeff Carter, Evgeni Malkin, Marion Gaborik, and Jarome Iginla.)
It probably won’t surprise you to discover that guys who are breaking this mark are doing one of two things: They’re either taking a ton of shots or they have a high shooting percentage. If we graph those two metrics you see a pretty strong correlation.
You’re seeing a range there from Ovechkin scoring 56 goals with a Sh% of 10.6% while firing 528 shots in a single season to Stamkos scoring 60 goals with a Sh% of 19.8%. (Brad Boyes scored 43 with a Sh% of 20.8% and Thomas Vanek hit 40 with 19%.)
The guys with the fewest shots taken by a 40-goal scorer in a 82-game season are Vanek with 211, Boyes at 207, Daniel Alfredsson with 217, and Joe Pavelski last year with 225. So even when guys are breaking 40 with a high shooting percentage, they’re still taking a lot of shots.
This is the first red flag for Niederreiter and Zucker. They’re both on pace for 181 shots.
Shoot!
Let’s look at guys who take a lot of shots in general, because that tends to equal goals.
Last season there wasn’t a player who took 270 or more shots who didn’t score at least 30 goals. There are 10 players who took that many. In the 2011-12 season 14 guys took at least 276 shots and all of them scored 30 or more goals.
This kind of math isn’t universal, but it’s certainly worth a look back over the last ten years. Players who are taking 275 shots and up have a pretty good chance of scoring 30 or more goals. There are of course exceptions. Dustin Byfuglien took 347 shots in 2010-11 and scored only 20 goals for a 5.8% shooting percentage.
In 2008-09, Dion Phaneuf scored 11 goals on 277 shots for a 4% shooting percentage.
It happens.
But in 2010-11 eight of 13 players above 279 scored 30 or more. In 2009-10, 12 of 16 who took at least 272 scored 30+. 2008-09: 11 of 15 above 275 shots score 30+. 2007-08: 12 of 13 over 272 shots scored 30+. 2006-07: 13 of 15 over 273 shots scored 30+. 2005-06: 19 of 23 who took 264 shots or more scored 30+.
So, if you’re up around 275 shots, while there are no guarantees, you’re really helping your odds of breaking 30.
Zucker and Niederreiter’s projection of 181 doesn’t look like a breakthrough kind of number and it definitely doesn’t look like 40+ territory.
There hasn’t been a 40-goal scorer in the last ten years who has taken as few as 181 shots.
In 2013-14 and 2007-08 there wasn’t a 30-goal scorer who took fewer than 200 shots. In 2011-12 one player, Jordan Eberle, broke 30 with fewer than 200. Four of the 29 players who broke 30 in 2010-11 were under 200 shots. One did it in 2009-10, six in 2008-09, eight of 42 in 2006-07, and ten of 47 in 2005-06.
Only 11.5% of the 260 instances of a player breaking 30 goals in the last ten years were by a player who took fewer than 200 shots.
So, 275 means that you’ve got a great chance and fewer than 200 means that your chances are starting to narrow.
Obviously that’s not law — Petr Prucha scored 30 goals in 2005-06 on just 130 shots — but these are a couple of somewhat arbitrary levels worth noting. (Arbitrary only in the sense that it could easily by 278 shots ups your chance and below 196 is bad…but I like round numbers.)
Shooting Percentage
Shooting percentage is a little more tricky of a metric to bring into the discussion.
Vanek scored 40 with a 19% shooting percentage, but that doesn’t happen often. Yet, players who score that many goals have a higher shooting percentage than the league average. So, it’s hard to apply regression when you’re assessing whether or not a player will be an elite scorer.
Currently both Niederreiter and Zucker have pretty high shooting percentages with Niederreiter at 20.8% and Zucker at 18.9%. Those will probably come down, says regression, but that doesn’t close the door on one of them becoming elite and scoring 40 with a 18% shooting percentage. It’s just not very likely, even among elite scorers.
For reference in the below chart here are the number of players in each season who broke the 30 goal mark.
2013-14: 21 players
2011-12: 30 players
2010-11: 29 players
2009-10: 24 players
2008-09: 39 players
2007-08: 28 players
2006-07: 42 players
2005-06: 47 players
So here are some charts distributing the number of players above and below some shooting percentage thresholds.
We see a couple of drop-off points. There aren’t many guys breaking the 30-goal mark with a shooting percentage below 12% and not many people are doing it with 17% or higher as a shooting percentage. In that next column in both directions you’re seeing things thin out rapidly.
Shooting percentage, with regards to predicting goal totals, doesn’t seem terribly useful. It’s interesting retrospectively, but it’s tough to use this to predict how the shots are going to go in the future. Both Nino and Zucker’s Sh%, taken as a part of the league, are likely to drop. They should. That kind of a shooting percentage is nearly impossible to maintain over an 82-game season.
But if they regress to league average they aren’t likely to be a part of this group, which is above average. 20.8%? that’ll probably drop. If it drops to 9%, that’s a bad sign for their odds of reaching 30+ goals, especially given the number of shots they’re taking.
Ok, Bring It In
It’s unlikely that either is breaking 30. I hope they do and I’d put money on them breaking 20, which is a big accomplishment itself, but it doesn’t look like they’re taking enough shots to make it happen.
If they were taking more shots with a lower shooting percentage and were at the goal totals they are now, I’d feel a whole lot better about one of them reaching that 30-goal mark. But as it stands they’re both poised for a career year and a big step forward in their development, but I don’t think we’ll see either finishing among the league’s elite goal scorers this season.