<p><p>SEATTLE – Seattle Kraken forward Jared McCann spent his childhood honing his shot by firing pucks and rubber balls into concrete cinder blocks his parents, owners of a construction company, set up outside their various homes.</p></p><p><p>McCann’s dad, Matt, even built cement pathways leading up to the cinder blocks so he could practice shooting from up close and at a distance. His shot led to a 24th overall selection by the Vancouver Canucks in the 2014 draft, a long-term contract extension by the Kraken early last year and then McCann’s first 40-goal season during the 2022-23 season.</p></p><p><p>“I work on it all the time,” McCann said. “I’m always shooting pucks. You know you’re never going to be perfect at something. But I feel like I’ve gotten a lot better at shooting the puck throughout my lifetime.</p></p><p><p>“So, it’s just something I work on every single day. I just feel like if you stop working at something you kind of lose it a bit. So, it’s better to stay involved.”</p></p><p><p>But McCann’s tough-to-handle shot also resulted in an unusually high shooting percentage – the number of shots resulting in goals – of 19% last season and fueled some skepticism about luck playing an outsized role in his 40 goals. And it wasn’t just McCann: The Kraken as a team set a modern analytics record by scoring on 10.37% of shots in even-strength situations, raising questions about whether the NHL’s second highest-scoring squad can repeat its offensive exploits.</p></p><p><p>Teams typically get a shot percentage boost from power plays, which allow for more dangerous scoring chances. The Kraken had their overall shooting percentage climb to 11.6% with power plays factored in, the NHL’s second highest behind top-scoring Edmonton and well above the league average 10.1%.</p></p><p><p>McCann feels the team’s mix of young, creative puck-movers and above-average “shooters” helped feed the shooting percentage totals.</p></p><p><p>His shooting percentage was the NHL’s 10th highest among regulars who appeared in half their team’s games while 10 other Kraken players exceeded league average – including Eeli Tolvanen and Matty Beniers, besting it by huge margins at 16.5% and 16.2%, respectively.</p></p><p><p>It isn’t uncommon for veterans with strong shots to boast above-average career shooting percentages without luck necessarily factoring in.</p></p><p><p>After all, players with tough shots tend to score more than those firing pucks easier for goalies to handle.</p></p><p><p>McCann has an above average 12.2% shooting percentage for his career and spent his last three seasons – and four overall – in the low teens for percentages.</p></p><p><p>Where it gets trickier to gauge is when players nearly double the league average as he just did.</p></p><p><p>Oilers star forward Leon Draisaitl has averaged 18.1% in his career and no less than 18.5% his last five seasons. But he’s also a perennial 50-goal man, meaning few will suggest his fourth-highest NHL shooting percentage of 21.1% last season means he’s automatically headed for goal-scoring regression.</p></p><p><p>Still, even last season’s reigning Hart Trophy winner as league MVP, Auston Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leafs, saw his shooting percentage fall to 12.2% from 17.2% and goals drop to 40 from 60. Kraken forward Yanni Gourde scored 21 goals in 2021-22 with a shooting percentage of 16.5% but just 14 goals last season after his shooting percentage reverted to around league average at 9.9%.</p></p><p><p>Advanced statistics from Money Puck showed McCann’s 19.6 goals above his “expected” tally based on shot quality was the most of any regular NHL player. Likewise, his actual goals per 60 minutes was 1.86 – 0.91 more than his “expected” total and the NHL’s biggest gap among regulars by at least a 0.69 margin.</p></p><p><p>Given McCann was a first-time 40-goal man not roundly projected to reach such highs, the only way he’ll likely silence shooting percentage skeptics is by repeating his scoring totals.</p></p><p><p>Likewise with Tolvanen and Beniers, young players without much track record.</p></p><p><p>Both have above-average shots, but it’s tough to gauge whether a rookie such as Beniers can maintain a shooting percentage in the midteens based off one season of production.</p></p><p><p>Tolvanen posted just a 7.3% shooting percentage in his only full season of 75 games with Nashville in 2021-22, though he did reach 16.9% over 40 games in 2020-21. Last season’s 16.5% with the Kraken, producing a career-high 16 goals, came in 48 games.</p></p><p><p>In many ways, shooting percentage questions surrounding top Kraken goal scorers mirror those about the team itself: Does it have blossoming elite scorers, or is it a squad relying primarily on offensive depth and some luck?</p></p><p><p>“It’s a little of both,” McCann said of the fine line between luck and skill at sustaining a high shooting percentage. “You see guys staying out after practice, always working on their shot and hitting the net. As long as you hit the net, it’s always got a chance to go in.”</p></p>
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