Detroit ranks second in the league in shooting percentage. What does that say about their playoff aspirations?

12.0

That's the percentage of Detroit Red Wings' shots this season have found the back of the net through 50 games.  It's the second highest figure in the league, trailing only the Vancouver Canucks at 13.5%.  The league average number for the season is just 9.6%.

If you look up and down the top 10 of the NHL by shooting percentage, you'll find seven teams everyone more or less figured would be Stanley Cup contenders (Dallas, Colorado, Tampa, Boston, New Jersey, the Rangers, Edmonton), two teams in Detroit and the Canucks who have outpaced expectation, and the Arizona Coyotes (who, despite strong finishing and commendable goaltending, sit sixth in the Central Division).

Fundamentally, shooting percentage is a site of significant variance, much of which feels arbitrary. Whether year-to-year, within a season, at the individual level or at the team-wide level, shooting percentage can be a fickle friend—one day helping you outperform the work you're actually doing and the next obscuring your hard work with its cruelties.

If you're looking for a reason to explain why a team or player is experiencing a slump, shooting percentage is a natural place to turn.  Same for a team or player performing dramatically above expectations.  

The Canucks entered the year as a credible postseason contender but hardly at the front of mind when it came time to talk about the chase for the Cup.  Thanks to a season-long sustained shooting heater, Vancouver sits seven points clear at the top of the Pacific Division with a game in hand.  That's not to say (necessarily) the Canucks are lucky to be where they are but merely to note that their shooting percentage is a clear explanatory factor in their unexpected success.

And yet there's a reason seven of the NHL's top 10 teams by shooting percentage are teams most anybody would have expected to see at or near the top of the league's standings when the season began.  Even accounting for variation, you'd expect a team blessed with talented offensive players (the kind of players who inspire belief that the team could make a serious run at the Cup) to be able to finish more consistently than a group without those talents.  By a similar token, you'd expect a team that has systems in place to routinely create a higher quality of offensive opportunity to finish more reliably than a team without that advantage working in its favor.

So where do the Red Wings fit into this spectrum?  Is their high shooting percentage a harbinger that their success is unsustainable?  If it's too reductive to say that a high shooting percentage inherently suggests unreliably good fortune, then what does it mean?  There are a number of ways to approach these questions, but I think an important starting point is the idea of design.  

Earlier this week, I wrote about the fact that Detroit leads the NHL in goalscoring from players who were not on the roster a year ago.  In that piece, I cited a quotation from Steve Yzerman over the summer (after the Red Wings had already brought in players like Daniel Sprong, Shayne Gostisbehere, and J.T. Compher but before the arrivals of Alex DeBrincat and Patrick Kane): "We'd like to score more.  I think that's the general consensus 'hey, the Red Wings need to score more.'"

Entering the offseason, Detroit believed in its ability to keep games competitive on the strength of its five-on-five play (albeit with a need from improved depth) but that it lacked the finishing ability to turn those competitive efforts into victories.  So the Red Wings set about resolving that issue by acquiring players like the aforementioned ones who had shown high-end scoring chops at previous stops across the league.  With that in mind, it's fair to assess Detroit's improvement in shooting percentage is more than dumb luck and instead (at least to some extent) the product of intentional design.

Considering the up-and-down nature of the Red Wings' season, I also think it's worth breaking down the team's shooting percentage by month.  In October, Detroit came out hot at 12.9% while earning a .650 points percentage.  In November, both numbers dipped slightly to 11.6% and .583.  In December, the shooting percentage dipped again to 11.3% and the points percentage collapsed down to .367.  Finally, during a red hot January, both figures climbed again to 12.7% and .769.

What strikes me most about that progression is the outlier that was December.  It was, without doubt, the worst hockey the Red Wings played all season, with an injury- and suspension-depleted lineup unable to stand up to a frenetic schedule.  However, what suffered wasn't so much Detroit's finishing as the defense and goaltending.  Yes, the shooting percentage fell off but not by much, and when the December woes relented at the start of the new year, there was another bump in finishing but not such a leap as to explain the team's points percentage more than doubling.

So what does that suggest moving forward?

To me, first and foremost, it's worth acknowledging that the Red Wings have defied preseason (external) expectations by finishing like one of the best attacking teams in the NHL.  Some measure of regression there may still be inevitable, at the very least for a few dry spells in the remaining 32 games of the regular season.

However, because of Detroit's established track record for the year in finishing at an above-average clip, I would contend the bigger variable in the Red Wings' forthcoming playoff push will be sustaining the level of defending and goaltending that helped the team to a season-saving month of January.

Also from THN Detroit

PWHL Set to Visit Detroit for Red Wings Double-Header

Healthy Out of the All-Star Break, Detroit Primed for Playoff Push

Stat of the Day: Red Wings Denying High-Danger Chances

DeBrincat Picks Up Third Star of the Week Honors After All-Star Performance

From the Archive: Is Dylan Larkin a New Steve Yzerman?

Augustine, Savage Enjoying Life at Michigan State, Eager to Renew U-M Rivalry at Duel in the D