This week we are going to take a bit of a left turn and look at some shooting data. Dobber Frozen Tools Reports has a report titled Missed Shots which includes a lot of interesting information about shot attempts, blocked shots, missed shots, goal posts, and crossbars.

For today I wanted to focus in on the last two as it is not something we have touched on much in this column. Posts are such a fantasy dead zone. The players did everything right; they set up the play, got the shot off, beat the goalie, and it doesn't even register as a shot on goal in fantasy. Players can end up with a fair amount of these throughout the season also, there are currently 55 players with eight or more posts so far this season and 131 with more than five posts. A couple inches either way could have changed many a fantasy matchup over the course of the season.

To set the stage I ran the report for the 2024-25 season and exported the data to be able to organize the data I wanted. Essentially, I wanted to get an understanding of how often we expect our NHL players to hit the post. The report has a handy Hit Post Percent number which is the combined number of crossbar and post hits compared to the total number of shot attempts. If we put in some filters for total shot attempts (at 200), we see that the post percent caps at about five percent. Of the 344 who took 200 shot attempts in 2024-25, only 20 (about six percent) hit the post at a higher rate than four percent of their shot attempts. I also compared players between years, and this does not seem to be repeatable at all as of all of the players in the top ten in 2024-25, only one is in the top 100 thus far in 2025-26. The major takeaway then is that hitting the post is a random occurrence stat and it is unlikely that a player will end a season with over four percent of their shots hitting the post.

So with all that in mind, who is hitting the post the most frequently in 2025-26? The table below gives us some basic information about a player (name, position, and team) and then specific information about their production to date (games played, shots on goal, shot attempts, and percent of the time they have hit the post). I have it displayed using percent rather than pure post count because it allows us to see which players might have more posts than we would expect at this stage in the season. While it is true that these players might maintain their percentages through the rest of the season (there are players who end the season with high percentages afterall) chances are pretty good that these numbers will continue to fall as players take more shots.

Nick Suzuki leads the league with 5.4 percent of his shot attempts hitting the post. In real terms that accounts for five posts and nine crossbars for 14 total hits. It would also be completely reasonable for him to have half of that percentage, or seven more pucks that might have been goals. Now we certainly can't guarantee that all of them would have been goals, but even if the split was 50/50 we are talking 3-4 more goals. Incidentally if he had three more goals he would be matching his shooting percentage from the past two seasons. We are sort of burying the lede here with Suzuki in that he is on a 94-point pace. He is coming off two 30-plus-goal seasons and is just a few posts away from being on pace to do it again.

Dylan Strome is a pretty similar case. He is a couple of shooting percentage points below his recent career averages while maintaining a pretty consistent shot rate. Give him a couple of goals by the process we used for Suzuki and he is right back on track – and would be on pace to match the 28- or 29-goal output for the past two seasons. He is not currently on pace to match his 82-point pace from 2024-25 though, but a big part of that is a big drop off in power-play points, particularly assists. He is only on pace for about 24 power-play points in 25-26 compared to his 34 from 24-25.

Bryan Rust is experiencing the exact opposite phenomenon as Strome and Suzuki. He clearly ranks highly on this list indicating maybe he could have a couple of more goals, but unfortunately, while his shot rates have been consistent, his shooting percentage is already a bit higher than his recent average. While it is still in his expected range, it is on the high side, and based on his expected goal numbers, the danger of his shots is declining. All of this is still around the margins and nothing huge to be concerned about yet, but he is in an odd place where his shots are less dangerous, he is hitting more posts, and still getting enough other bounces that his shooting percentage is on the high end of his range.

Quinton Byfield is a very interesting case, though not really because of posts. Like with previous players his shot rates have been relatively consistent and so have his shooting percentage. It is technically a tiny bit low but that really isn't the issue Byfield has been facing this season. We were hoping for big things from him and it just hasn't materialized yet. A big part of that has to do with some pretty mediocre points participation numbers and very low team shooting percentage numbers. Basically, this is a problem of low numbers of goals scored while Byfield is on the ice, and only a couple of those can be attributed to Byfield hitting the post.

Sam Reinhart looks to be putting up another solid season. His point rates, shot rates and shooting percentages all look pretty good. His general point production is fine, so maybe the only takeaway is that he could have had a few more bounces this season. The one interesting thing is that his expected goal numbers are dipping again, and have been consistently dipping since 2021-22. Like we said with Rust, Reinhart is just legitimately taking less dangerous shots that he used to. So far it has only led to a few more posts than expected, but it might be a check engine light for future performance.

That is all for this week.

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