I don't disagree with Phil, but I also think that it's the quality of shots as opposed to the quantity. I do agree that if you get the puck to the net, your chances of scoring multiply greatly (and that is the most obvious statement I've ever said), but crappy shots from the goal line rarely go in (unless your team was playing the Rangers during last year's Western Canadian road trip, when shots by Vancouver and Calgary snuck by Henrik Lundqvist at the post).
Who has the most shots on goal for the Rangers this year? If you play fantasy hockey, you would already know the answer to this. Far and away, Scott Gomez has the most. His 146 shots are 10 more than Ryan Callahan, 15 more than Chris Drury, and 29 more than anybody else on the team. Keep in mind, Gomez also sat out 5 games to injury.
Of forwards who get regular ice time, Gomez is last in shooting percentage, clocking in at a very un-$7M/year 5.5%. (Colton Orr and Fred Sjostrom have lower percentages, as do 4 defensemen.) He has 8 goals on those shots, and two of those are empty netters. So the real math is as follows...
6 goals. 144 shots. 4.2% of his shots go past a goaltender.
Against Pittsburgh on Sunday, the Rangers had 33 shots on goal, technically. The Penguins had 23 shots.
The shot selection was the key to victory for the Penguins (as well as a listless effort by the Rangers, but that's another story altogether).
The Penguins were able to break through the defense of the Rangers and get odd-man rushes and breakaways on Lundqvist. Tyler Kennedy basically danced in all alone while Nigel Dawes did nothing to stop Kennedy's shot that beat Lundqvist. The Rangers take a multitude of hooking and holding penalties when they don't have to, yet to stop a goal, all Dawes had to do was slash his stick or yank his arm, and he didn't do it.
The Rangers couldn't penetrate the injured defensive players of Pittsburgh, and wound up taking awful shots from the goal line and near the boards. ESPN Magazine had an interesting line about how Guy LaFleur and others used to shoot from the boards and it would go in, but thanks to the new stay-at-home goalies, that's a thing of the past. Someone should tell Gomez (and the rest of the team as well).
How many REAL chances did the Rangers get? Coach Tom Renney said maybe five. I know Dawes had a great one that beat Marc-Andre Fleury but rang off the crossbar. Nikolai Zherdev did some fancy moves and nearly deked around 3 enemy skaters but lost the puck at the end. Drury had a 4-on-3 shot that almost went in. Crossbar, nearly, almost. Story of the season.
I would rather the Rangers take 10 shots per game if they are all from in the slot. These half-hearted attempts at throwing the puck to the net in hopes of causing rebounds are atrocious. These rebounds aren't being picked up by Ranger players because they aren't in front of the net! They're playing perimeter hockey, and goals just don't get scored that way.
If Renney is content winning 1-0 and 2-1 games, then by all means, play the perimeter and hope to get lucky. But to be honest, the defense isn't good enough to make one-goal leads hold up for more than a game or two at a time. Once the Rangers are exposed, they are exposed.
Yes, Phil Esposito scored a lot, and he shot a lot. But his shots were from in the slot, prime real estate, in front of a screened goalie. That's how you score goals, not when the goalie clearly sees the puck traveling in at a 180 degree angle.
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