Shooting

Overview

Shooting is two separate skills that get taught as one. The first is mechanics — how you move the puck from your stick to the net. The second is shot selection — deciding which shots are worth taking and where to put them. Most players spend all their practice time on the first and none on the second, then wonder why they take eight shots a game and score twice a season.

This document covers both. The short version: a shot the goalie sees clearly, from distance, into a set body, is nearly worthless — NHL goaltenders stop the overwhelming majority of those. A shot from the middle of the ice, taken before the goalie is set, or one they have to move sideways to reach, is worth many times more. Everything below is in service of getting the second kind.

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A Note on Language

These terms recur throughout. They are also defined in Rink Map and Glossary, but every document here stands alone.

• The slot — the area directly in front of the net, running from the crease out to roughly the top of the faceoff circles, bounded roughly by the two faceoff dots on either side. The most dangerous ice on the rink.
• The high slot — the upper part of that area, from the faceoff dots out to the top of the circles.
• The goalmouth — the immediate net front, right at the edge of the crease. Not the same as the slot; it is the innermost sliver of it.
• The point — the area near the offensive blue line where defencemen normally stand.
• The half-wall — the boards roughly level with the faceoff dot, between the corner and the point.
• Five-hole — the gap between a goaltender's leg pads. Note that the gap between a goalie's stick arm and their body is a different target with its own name, the six-hole; see Goaltender for the goalie's own vocabulary.
• Release — the moment the puck leaves your blade, and by extension how long your shooting motion takes from first movement to that moment.
• Flex — how much your stick shaft bends. A bent shaft stores energy and springs it back into the puck, like a drawn bow.
• Toe / heel of the blade — the far end and the near end. Where the puck sits on the blade changes what the shot does.
• Cupping the puck — tilting the blade face slightly over the top of the puck so it cannot slide off.

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The Shot Types

There are six things you can do to a puck to send it at the net. Learn all six; you will use three of them constantly.

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The Wrist Shot — the fundamental

This is the shot everything else is built from. If you only ever get one shot right, get this one.

Mechanics, in order:

1. Start the puck behind your back foot, cupped on the heel-to-middle part of the blade. "Back foot" means the foot furthest from the net in your stance — for a right-handed shooter facing the net, that is usually the right foot. Starting the puck back gives you a runway; starting it beside your foot means there is nothing to accelerate through.
2. Hands comfortably apart on the shaft. Top hand near the end, bottom hand roughly 30–35 cm (12–14 inches) below it — for most adults that is a little narrower than shoulder width, so use the measurement rather than the image. Grip firmly but not tightly — a white-knuckle grip locks your wrists, and the wrists are the whole shot.
3. Pull, don't slap. Drag the puck forward along the ice in a sweep, from behind the back foot to in front of the front foot. The puck stays in contact with the blade the entire time. This is the difference between a wrist shot and everything else: nothing ever leaves the ice or leaves the blade.
4. Transfer your weight from back foot to front foot as you sweep, the same weight shift as a golf swing or a throw. Power comes from your legs and torso, not your arms. Players who shoot with arms only cap out early and never get past it.
5. Load the flex. As you sweep, push down and forward with the bottom hand while pulling back and in with the top hand. Those two opposing forces bend the shaft. That stored bend is the second half of your power.
6. Roll the wrists at release. As the puck rolls from heel to toe of the blade, snap your wrists over — the blade face rotates from cupped-over-the-puck to closed-toward-the-target. This is the "snap" everyone talks about, and it is what puts spin on the puck. A spinning puck flies flat and true; a wobbling puck does whatever it likes.
7. Follow through at the target. Finish low, with your blade and hands pointing at the ice-level part of the net, and the puck stays low. Finish high, with hands and blade rising toward the top corner, and the puck rises. You do not aim a wrist shot by aiming your eyes; you aim it with where the follow-through ends up.

When to use it: Almost anywhere you have a beat of time — off the rush, in the slot, off a rebound, from the half-wall. It is the most accurate shot you have and needs the least room.

Trade-offs: Less raw velocity than a slap shot, and it takes marginally longer than a snap shot because of the sweep. In exchange you get accuracy, deception, and the ability to shoot from almost any body position.

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The Snap Shot — the most useful shot in modern hockey

The snap shot is the compromise between the wrist shot and the slap shot, and the compromise is so good that at higher levels it has quietly become the default. You get most of the power of a slap shot with most of the release speed of a wrist shot.

What makes it different from a wrist shot: there is no long sweep. The puck sits beside or just behind your skate, roughly where it would be if you were stickhandling, and you shoot from there. Your chest faces the net rather than your shoulder — you are already in an attacking posture, so nothing about your body tells the goalie a shot is coming.

Mechanics:

1. Puck to the side of your body, on the blade, no wind-up.

2. Bottom hand lower on the shaft than for a wrist shot — at or just above the midpoint. This position is what lets you bend the shaft hard in a very short motion. Be aware that this overlaps with the slap-shot grip described below (midpoint or lower): the two hand positions sit close together and often coincide. The grip is not what distinguishes a snap shot from a slap shot — the wind-up is. Snap shot: hand near the middle, no wind-up. Slap shot: hand at the middle or below, with a wind-up.

3. Drop the blade just behind the puck and load the shaft by pushing down with the bottom hand while pulling back with the top hand. You are cocking a spring, not winding up an axe.

4. Transfer weight from your back leg onto your front leg, exactly as in a wrist shot. The difference is not the direction of the transfer, it is the distance: because there is no long sweep, the shift is short, sharp and finished almost as soon as it starts. Failing to transfer at all — shooting off a flat-footed, arms-only motion — is the most common snap shot fault.

5. Release almost immediately. The blade face angle at the moment the puck leaves is what sets the height — roll the wrists up to open the face and lift it, keep them flat to keep it down.

When to use it: Quick chances in the slot. Off a pass when a defender is closing. Off a rebound. Any time the window is open now and will be shut in half a second. If you are inside the faceoff dots, this is probably your shot.

Trade-offs: Slightly less power than a full wrist shot with a long runway, and much less than a slap shot. You will not beat a goalie from the blue line with it. You will beat one from twenty feet (about six metres), constantly.

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The Slap Shot — powerful, and usually the wrong choice

The slap shot is the hardest shot in hockey and the most overused. Be honest with yourself about this: it takes the longest to set up, it is the least accurate, it is the easiest to read and block, and the situations where it is genuinely the best option are narrow.

Mechanics:

1. Wind up by lifting the stick back and up. A full wind-up takes the blade to around shoulder height; a three-quarter wind-up takes it to around waist height and is more useful more often.
2. Hands wide apart — bottom hand well down the shaft, at the midpoint or below it. The wider the hands, the more leverage you have to bend the shaft. (As noted under the snap shot, the two grips overlap around mid-shaft; the wind-up, not the hand, is what makes this a slap shot.)
3. Strike the ice two to five centimetres (an inch or two) behind the puck, not the puck itself. This is the whole trick and it is counter-intuitive. You are hitting the ice to bend the shaft. The bend loads, the shaft springs forward, and the blade catches the puck as it recoils. Hitting the puck directly gives you an arm-powered slap with none of the stored energy — which is why beginners' slap shots are slower than their wrist shots.
4. Transfer weight onto the front skate through the downswing. Same principle as everywhere else: legs and torso, not arms.
5. Contact the puck near the middle of the blade as the shaft releases, then roll it toward the toe.
6. Follow through at the target. As with every shot in this document, the height is physically set by the blade face angle at the moment the puck separates; the follow-through is the cue that produces that angle (see the blockquote under The Wrist Shot). Finish low and keep the face square — from the point, low is almost always what you want, because that is what a teammate can tip and what produces a playable rebound.

When to use it: From the point, when you have a lane and time and want the puck to arrive at the net front hard and low for a tip. On a one-timer from a set position. On the power play from the top of an umbrella. That is roughly the list.

Trade-offs and the honest assessment: The wind-up is a giant flag telling the goalie a shot is coming and the defender to drop into the lane. The blocked-shot rate is high, the miss rate is high, and a missed slap shot from the point usually goes around the boards and out of the zone — you have just given away possession for nothing. A controlled three-quarter slap shot that hits the net is worth far more than a full wind-up that sails wide. Most of the time, from the point, a low hard snap shot is the better play: nearly as heavy, twice as fast to release, far more likely to get through.

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The Backhand — the most neglected shot in hockey

Almost nobody practises the backhand, and almost every goalie finds it harder to stop. Those two facts are related, and they are an opportunity sitting in plain sight.

Mechanics:

1. Puck on the back side of the blade, positioned between the middle and the heel — on the flat spot rather than the deepest part of the curve. Most blades have very little useful curve on the backhand side, so the flat area is your friend.
2. Hands a little wider than for a wrist shot — top hand at the end of the shaft, bottom hand roughly 40–50 cm (16–20 inches) below it, which is somewhat lower than the 30–35 cm you use on the forehand and well above the halfway point you use for a slap shot. The extra spread buys leverage, which is what the backhand is short of.
3. Keep the puck close to your body to start. Backhand power comes from a compact motion, not a long reach. Reaching kills it.
4. Sweep in an arc, not a straight line — the blade travels across in front of you rather than straight at the net. Roll the puck heel to toe as it goes.
5. Push down with the bottom hand to create leverage and bend the shaft, and pull through. You get much less flex on the backhand than the forehand, which is why the technique matters more.
6. Transfer weight to the front leg, toward the target.
7. Blade angle sets the height, as on every shot — open the face to lift it, keep it square to keep it low, and follow through pointing at the target so that the face does what you meant.

Why goalies struggle with it: Goaltenders spend the overwhelming majority of their reps facing forehands, so their read on release timing is calibrated to a forehand. A backhand releases from a different point, at a different moment, with less pre-shot telegraph. It also frequently forces a movement across the body — from a shooter cutting to their backhand side, a high backhand is one of the awkward saves in the game.

Why most players neglect it: you grow up taking thousands of forehand reps and a few dozen backhands, so the backhand feels bad, so you avoid it, so it stays bad. It is a pure volume problem with a pure volume fix.

Where it wins: in tight around the net, on breakaways, on rebounds that land on your off side, and any time you are in a compromised body position and turning to your forehand would cost you the chance. In traffic in front of the net, you will get more backhand looks than forehand ones — take them.

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The One-Timer — shooting a pass without stopping it

A one-timer is shooting a pass directly, without receiving it first. It is the fastest way to move a shot from one side of the ice to the other, which — as the section on the royal road below explains — is exactly the thing goalies most struggle with.

Mechanics:

1. Set your feet before the pass arrives. This is the whole skill. Get square to where you want to shoot, feet planted and wide, weight ready to move onto the front leg. If you are still skating when the pass gets there, you are receiving, not one-timing.
2. Open your body to the passer so the pass can reach your blade without going through your feet.
3. Start the backswing as the pass is released, not when it arrives. This is the timing point everyone gets wrong. If you wait to see the puck reach you, you are already late. Read the passer's release and begin your wind-up then; the puck and your blade should meet.
4. Keep the backswing short. A three-quarter or half wind-up is far more repeatable than a full one and misses the puck far less often. A missed one-timer is worse than no shot at all.
5. Contact the puck near the middle of the blade with the blade square to the target and weight moving onto the front leg. Follow through at the net, low.

When the pass is bad — and it usually is. Most one-timer opportunities arrive slightly wrong: too far ahead, behind you, bouncing, or rolling on edge. Have a plan:

• Pass slightly ahead of you — extend and take it off the toe of the blade rather than lunging. You will lose power; take the shot anyway if the lane is there.
• Pass behind you — do not reach back and swing at it. Kill the shot, receive the puck, and take a snap shot half a second later. A snap shot on target beats a whiffed one-timer every single time.
• Bouncing or rolling puck — abandon the one-timer. Settle it first and shoot second: cup the blade over the puck and give with it, absorbing the bounce rather than blocking it. ("Soft" means yielding hands, not an open blade face — an uncupped blade is exactly what a bouncing puck rides over. See Passing and Receiving.) Trying to one-time a rolling puck is how you send it into the corner.

The one-timer is a coaching-system play as much as an individual skill. Whether you are the one-timer option depends entirely on your team's offensive-zone setup and power-play formation — a 1-3-1 power play is built around the far-side one-timer, an overload usually is not. See Special Teams and Offensive Zone Play, and find out what your team runs.

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Tips and Deflections — changing direction beats adding speed

A tip (or deflection) is redirecting a shot from a teammate as it passes you, usually from the net front. It is the single most valuable thing a forward can do without ever possessing the puck, and it is closer to a receiving skill than a shooting one.

Mechanics:

1. Get your stick blade into the puck's path, flat on the ice or just above it, at the height you expect the shot.
2. Blade angle does the work. Open the face slightly and the puck lifts; close it and the puck stays low or drops. You are not trying to hit the puck — you are presenting an angled surface for it to bounce off.
3. Soft hands. Do not brace and do not swing. A rigid stick sends the puck straight back out; a stick held loosely, absorbing slightly on contact, keeps the puck low and controlled. If the tip does not go in, a soft blade drops it at your feet for a rebound rather than firing it to the corner.
4. Keep the blade on or near the ice unless you are deliberately going up for a high tip. Most tipped goals are low — and there are two hard ceilings on how high you may tip, which almost no coaching article mentions:
   • Rule 80.3 disallows the goal "when an attacking player causes the puck to enter the opponent's goal by contacting the puck above the height of the crossbar." The determining factor is stated explicitly: "where the puck makes contact with the stick." Contact at or below crossbar height that then goes in is a good goal.
   • Rule 80.1 sits lower but works differently: "Batting the puck above the normal height of the shoulders with a stick is prohibited." The whistle is conditional, not automatic — play stops only "when a puck is struck with a high stick and subsequently comes into the possession and control of a player from the offending team." So a puck you contact above shoulder height that goes to the opposition, or is recovered by them, is simply played on.
   • The two rules do not stack the way you might expect. A tip made above your shoulders but below the crossbar that goes straight in is a good goal — Rule 80.3 says so in terms: "If the puck makes contact with the stick at or below the level of the crossbar and enters the goal, this goal shall be allowed." The crossbar is the ceiling for the goal; your shoulders only matter for the possession whistle that follows a non-goal.
   • Practically: aim to tip at knee, waist or chest height. That keeps you clear of both rules and is where tippable pucks arrive anyway. Reaching above your shoulders is legal but risks the possession whistle; reaching above the bar loses the goal outright. (NHL Official Rules 2025-2026, Rules 80.1 and 80.3.)
5. Watch the puck all the way in, which is hard, because a defenceman is usually trying to move you.

Why it works: a goaltender tracks the puck and sets their body for a known trajectory. A deflection changes the trajectory a few feet in front of them, after they have committed. There is no time to re-read it. This is the principle that runs through this entire document — changing the puck's direction late is worth far more than adding speed to it. A modest shot tipped six inches sideways in front of the goalie beats a much harder one they have read from the blue line. (No figures are attached to that claim on purpose. You will see comparisons like "a 60 mph tipped shot beats a 95 mph clean one" quoted around the rink; they are illustrations somebody made up, not measurements of anything.)

A rules point that matters: screening a goalie — standing outside the crease in their sightline without contacting them — is normally legal. Rule 69.1 is the governing rule: a goal is disallowed only where an attacker "either by his positioning or by contact, impairs the goalkeeper's ability to move freely within his crease or defend his goal," or initiates deliberate contact. Note that positioning alone can do it — so a clean screen is legal, but crowding a goalie so he cannot move is not, contact or no contact. Rule 69.3 covers contact inside the crease, where contact with a goalie in his crease voids the goal, and where establishing a significant vision-obstructing position inside the crease voids it too. Rule 69.4 permits incidental contact "when the goalkeeper is in the act of playing the puck outside his goal crease, provided the attacking player has made a reasonable effort to avoid such unnecessary contact." And Rule 69.7 carves out the net-front case this document keeps sending you into: "In a rebound situation, or where a goalkeeper and attacking player(s) are simultaneously attempting to play a loose puck, whether inside or outside the crease, incidental contact with the goalkeeper will be permitted."

So what may you actually do? Stand outside the blue paint, in the goalie's eyes, without touching them — that is a legal and valuable screen. What you may not do is crowd them so they cannot move: standing outside the crease is not a safe harbour, because 69.1 disallows the goal on positioning alone if it impairs the goalie's ability to move or defend. The qualifier attaches to the impairment, not to which side of the paint your skates are on. See Rules Primer.

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Which shot, when — the one-line version

Each shot's "when to use it" is given above; the short summary is inside the dots, snap; with a beat of time or from range, wrist; in tight or on your off side, backhand; at the net front, tip; and slap only from the point with a lane and time. On a breakaway it is control and deception, not power — see Breakaways and Shootouts.

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Release Speed Beats Shot Speed

Here is the insight that reorganises everything else.

Shot speed is how fast the puck travels after it leaves your blade. Release speed is how long your shooting motion takes, from first movement to the puck leaving. They are different things, and release speed matters far more.

The reason is that a goaltender does not save a puck by reacting to it. They save it by reading it — watching your body, your hands, your blade, and your weight, then getting their body into the right position before the puck is on its way. If your shot arrives after they are set and square, it is a routine save at nearly any velocity. If your shot arrives before they are set, it is a scoring chance at almost any velocity.

One coaching resource puts the trade-off as: a 70 mph shot with a 0.3-second release will beat a goaltender more often than a 90 mph shot with a 0.7-second release, because the second one gives the goalie twice as long to be ready (HockeyMonkey). Treat those specific numbers as an illustration rather than a measurement — they are not from a published study — but the principle behind them is coaching consensus everywhere.

How to actually get a faster release

Stop gathering. The most common release-killer is the little pause where you settle the puck, look up, set your feet, and then shoot. Every one of those is a frame of warning. Shoot off the puck you already have, in the position you are already in.

Do not stop your feet. Stopping your skates before shooting is the loudest tell in hockey — every goalie reads it, every defender reads it. Learn to shoot in stride, releasing mid-stride while you are still moving. It feels less powerful at first because you cannot plant and load; you get that power back from your momentum, and you get a half-second of surprise on top.

Shoot off the "wrong" foot. The textbook shot releases as your weight arrives on the front foot — for a right-handed shooter, the left foot. Releasing off the same-side foot instead is unconventional, which is exactly why it works: it comes at a moment in your stride when the goalie's read says a shot is not coming. It costs some velocity. It is worth it. Practise it deliberately; it will not appear on its own. (Which foot this is relative to the boards flips depending on which wing you are on — see Shooting Off the Rush.)

Change your release point. Do not release from the same spot in your stance every time. Pull the puck 15–30 cm (six to twelve inches) laterally — in toward your feet, or out away from your body — before releasing. A goalie who has set their angle for a shot from point A now has a shot coming from point B, and their positioning is wrong by exactly that much. Moving the puck sideways also often opens a shooting lane past a defender's stick.

Use blade and body deception. Open the blade face as though you are going high, then close it at the last instant and go low. Look at one corner and shoot the other. Exaggerate a posture that suggests a shot to one place and release to another. All of these are cheap, all of them are trainable, and all of them work because the goalie is reading you, not the puck.

Look off, then shoot. A half-beat glance at a teammate in the slot moves a goalie's weight. Shoot into the space that opens.

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Accuracy and Shot Selection — where to actually aim

"Aim for the corners" is the standard instruction given to almost every young player, and there is a coaching school that disagrees with it — the one this section follows. Its argument: corners are the smallest targets on the net, they are guarded by the goalie's fastest-moving limbs, and missing one means the puck goes wide and out of the zone. Aim where the goalie is not, and where a miss still does something useful. Plenty of good coaches still teach corners; know that you are choosing between two schools rather than correcting an error.

The targets that are actually worth having:

• Five-hole — but time it. The gap between the pads. Whether this is a big target or a nearly sealed one is contested, and the answer is that it depends on what the goalie is doing at the moment of release. Against a butterfly goalie who is already down and set, the five-hole is largely closed — that is the entire point of the butterfly, and it is why shooters at every level drift toward shooting high in practice. It opens while the goalie is moving: pushing laterally, reaching a skate toward a post on a deke, or in the act of dropping. Modern goalies spend a lot of their time doing one of those, which is what makes it worth having. Take it when they are in motion or mid-drop; do not fire it into a set butterfly and call it a plan.
• The far corner off a lateral pass. When the puck has just crossed the middle of the ice, the goalie is still moving across to square up. Their momentum carries them, and the space they are moving away from — the far side, low — opens up. This is the highest-value target in hockey and it exists only in the instant after a cross-ice pass.
• Low blocker side for a rebound. The blocker is a flat, hard surface, and pads and blocker kick pucks back into the slot far more often than the glove swallows them. If you have a teammate at the net front, a hard low shot to the blocker side is a rebound-generating machine.
• Under the arms, over the pads. The gaps between glove and body, and blocker and body, are second only to five-hole for size and reliability.
• Short side high, but only when the goalie has cheated off their post. Not a default.

The most important idea in this section: shooting for a rebound or a tip is often better than shooting for a corner. A shot at a corner either goes in, is saved, or misses. A hard low shot at the pads with a teammate at the net front either goes in, gets tipped in, or produces a rebound in the most dangerous area on the ice — three good outcomes against one. So with bodies at the net, shoot to create (low, hard, on net, at the pads) rather than to finish; alone in the slot with the goalie beaten, pick a target and finish. Be explicit with yourself about which one you are doing. When NOT to Shoot below turns this into a single pre-shot test.

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Shooting Through Traffic

A shot that hits a shin pad is worse than no shot at all. You have given up possession, you have not tested the goalie, and the block usually starts a counter-attack the other way. Shooting into a defender's shins is the single most commonly wasted play in hockey, and it happens because players decide to shoot before they check whether there is a lane.

Getting the puck through, in order of importance:

1. Look for the lane before you shoot, not after. You need a clear channel to the net, not a hopeful gap. If you cannot see net or you cannot see your teammates' sticks at the net front, there is no lane.
2. Change the angle. Do not shoot from where you received the puck. Take one or two steps laterally along the blue line — toward the middle usually, or toward the boards if that is where the gap is. Defenders' sticks and bodies are set for the angle you had a second ago. Two steps changes everything and costs you almost nothing.
3. Get it off the ice — a little. A puck kept flat is easy to block with a stick. A puck lifted a few inches clears sticks. A puck lifted a foot or more is unusable for a tip and easy for the goalie to catch. A few inches is the whole target.
4. Low and hard for tips. If you have net-front traffic, the shot you want arrives at knee height or below, hard. Low enough for a teammate to redirect with a blade on the ice, hard enough that a small deflection still has pace on it. High point shots are a tipper's nightmare.
5. Fake the shot to make them commit. A shoulder drop and a half wind-up drops the defender into the lane and takes their stick out of it. Then step around and shoot for real.
6. Consider not shooting. If there is no lane, the play is to move the puck — D-to-D across the blue line, or down to the half-wall and back — until there is one. See Offensive Zone Play.

A note for defencemen at the point: the goal of a point shot is almost never to score directly. Point shots convert at roughly 1–3% (Hockey's Arsenal — a range read off a shot-location map, not a computed rate; see Where Shots Are Worth Taking). The goal is to produce a tip, a rebound, or a scramble in the slot — all of which require the puck to actually arrive there. That is why "get it through" beats "shoot it hard" every time.

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Where Shots Are Worth Taking

This is the part that changes how many goals you score, and it has nothing to do with your hands.

Shot value depends overwhelmingly on location. The exact figures vary by model, but every model agrees on the shape. These are the numbers to use, and each carries its own qualification with it, because they do not all rest on the same kind of evidence.

• Shots from the slot convert at roughly 10–15%. Shots from the perimeter convert at roughly 2–4% — a difference of three to seven times (The Coaches Site). Qualification: the source attributes these to "data from various hockey analytics sources" and names no dataset, so treat them as a coaching-level consensus range rather than a measurement you could re-derive.
• Put another way: point shots produce around 1–3 goals per 100 shots; shots from the "house" — the slot area in front of the net — produce around 5–15 (Hockey's Arsenal). Qualification: these are Greg Revak's readings off a shot-location map he credits to HockeyViz (Micah Blake McCurdy), given as ranges rather than as computed values — so they are approximate by construction, but the model behind them is at least named, which the first bullet's is not.
• Over a three-year five-on-five sample, close to half of all NHL goals came from the inner slot, and just over a quarter from the outer slot (The Point). "Inner slot" there means the area closest to the crease; "outer slot" the rest of the slot out to the top of the circles. Qualification: this split is computed from Sportlogiq tracking, which is not public — the same limit that applies to the Kane and Laine figures below, and it applies to this number too. The article's own wording is "nearly half" and "just over a quarter"; nobody outside Sportlogiq can check it.

What that means when you are standing on the ice with the puck: a shot from the slot is worth several times a shot from the point. Not slightly more — several times. If you can turn a point shot into a slot shot by making one pass, make the pass. If you can turn a perimeter shot into a slot shot by taking two strides toward the middle, take the strides.

The same analysis gave two real NHL examples of what bad shot selection costs, and it names them. Patrick Kane — "Kane takes over 20 percent of his shots from 'the dead zone' above the circles and has scored less than 2 percent of his goals from there." In the season before the article (2018-19) he attempted 79 shots from that area, of which "three of these led to a scoring chance, two produced goals and 38 resulted in a loss of possession." Patrik Laine managed "a mere 2 goals on 232 shot attempts from above the circles over his career" (Mike Kelly, The Point, 26 September 2019, using Sportlogiq tracking of the previous three NHL seasons at 5-on-5). The Sportlogiq tracking underneath is not public, so the raw counts cannot be re-derived from anywhere else — the figures are quoted exactly as the article gives them, and the 2018-19 dating is inferred from the publication date rather than stated. The pattern is what matters: these are among the best shooters alive, and if they cannot score from above the circles, you cannot either.

The practical rule: get to the middle, or get the puck to someone in the middle. Everything in Offensive Zone Play about cycling, net drives and finding the bumper exists to manufacture slot shots. That is what the whole offensive system is for.

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Screens, Goalie Sightlines and the Royal Road

Location is the first half of shot value. What the goalie can see, and whether they had to move, is the other half.

A goaltender who sees the puck the whole way, from a set position, with their angle correct, saves almost everything. Take away either the sight or the set position and the same shot becomes dangerous.

The royal road

Former NHL goaltender Steve Valiquette popularised a concept called the royal road — an imaginary line running down the middle of the ice, which a puck crossing forces the goalie to move laterally across. Shots taken immediately after the puck has crossed it, by a pass or by a carrier skating over it, score at a far higher rate than shots that have not, because the goalie cannot be set and square.

Published descriptions of where exactly that line runs do not agree, and the weight of evidence is against the popular version. Most secondary accounts, including OMHA's, describe it as running the length of the ice from the centre of one net to the centre of the other. The two sources closest to Valiquette himself describe something narrower and zone-limited:

• Blue Seat Blogs: "The zone is divided in half, vertically from the center bar of the net to the top of the circles, and is bisected by a horizontal line going laterally across the top of the circles. The centerline is Valiquette's 'Royal Road'."
• NHL.com's own reporting — the article in which Valiquette gives the 76% figure directly — calls it "a line that halves the offensive zone in two below the tops of the faceoff circles."

On that reading the road stops at the top of the circles rather than running the length of the rink, and a lateral pass out at the blue line would not cross it.

This document still uses the net-centre-to-net-centre version, because it is the description you will actually meet and because it gives the more conservative coaching instruction — cross the middle earlier and more often than the narrow version requires, and you cannot be wrong. But be clear that the numbers below are computed against the narrower definition, and that the narrower definition is the better-attested one. What has never been published is the precise geometry Clear Sight Analytics tracks against — the framework is proprietary — so the last few feet of the disagreement cannot be settled from public sources.

Analysts have pushed back that this formalises something coaches already knew rather than revealing something new — and that is fair. It is still the cleanest single way to think about shot value: make the goalie move sideways, or make sure they cannot see it. That instruction does not depend on the number or on the exact geometry.

How to create those shots

• Pass across the middle before shooting. A cross-slot pass, a D-to-D pass at the point followed by a shot, a low-to-high play from the corner to the far point — anything that drags the goalie across.
• Attack from behind the net and out the other side. The goalie must rotate their whole body and re-find the puck.
• Screen. Stand in the sightline between the goalie and the shooter, feet just outside the blue paint, stick on the ice for a tip. A screen turns a routine save into a guess. Legal — but note the test above: it is not "outside the crease is fine." Rule 69.1 disallows the goal where you impair the goalie's ability to move or defend by positioning alone, wherever your skates are. Take away their eyes, not their room.
• Shoot through your own teammates' legs from the point — deliberately. If your winger is at the net front, the shooting lane past them is also the sightline they are blocking.
• Shoot off a rebound immediately. The goalie has just committed to one location and is recovering. Do not settle it and pick a corner; hit it.
• Vary the shot's origin — the release-point section above is the individual-player version of the same idea.

The general rule: a shot the goalie has to move for, or cannot see, is worth several times a shot they are set and square for — from the same spot on the ice. Two shots from the identical location can differ enormously in value. That is entirely under your team's control.

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Shooting Off the Rush

Rush chances — attacking with speed before the defence is set — are among the best shooting opportunities in the game, and most of them are wasted by shooting a beat too late.

The timing. As you carry the puck wide and drive toward the net, the defender is skating backwards, gap closing, stick out toward the puck. There is a window that opens as you approach and closes when their stick arrives. Release as their stick is closing, not after. If you wait until you are "in a good spot," you are shooting into a blocked lane from a bad angle.

Shoot off the "other" foot — and work out which one that is for you, because it depends on your wing. The textbook shot releases as your weight arrives on the front foot, which for a right-handed shooter is the left foot. What "front foot" means relative to the ice depends entirely on which side you are coming down:

• On your strong-side wing (a left-handed shot on left wing, a right-handed shot on right wing), your front foot is the one nearer the middle of the ice. The unconventional release here is off the outside foot, nearer the boards.
• On your off wing (a left-handed shot on right wing, a right-handed shot on left wing), the reverse is true: your front foot is already the one nearer the boards. Being told to "shoot off the outside foot" therefore tells you to do the completely conventional thing while believing you are doing something clever. The unconventional release for you is off the inside foot.

The underlying instruction is the one that transfers: release off the foot you do not normally release off. It gets the puck away earlier in the stride, keeps it further from the defender's stick, and arrives at a moment the goalie's read says a shot is not coming. It costs some velocity and it is worth it — but check which foot that actually is on the wing you play, because getting the label wrong means practising your existing habit.

Do not stop your feet. The rush shot is the purest case for shooting in stride. Everything you gain from planting, you lose in warning given.

Pick your target based on the goalie's angle. On a wide rush, the goalie is hugging the near post to take away the short side and is exposed far side and low. Off a cut to the middle, five-hole is open as they push across. On a genuine breakaway, deception matters more than power — a backhand-to-forehand, a shoulder fake, a change of speed. Full treatment in Breakaways and Shootouts below.

Know what the second wave is doing. If you have a trailer coming late into the high slot, delaying a beat and passing back to them is often a better chance than your own shot from the wing — because it converts a perimeter shot into a slot shot. See Zone Entries for how rush attacks are structured, and Defending the Rush for the other side of it.

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Breakaways and Shootouts — the Shooter's Side

A breakaway is you, the puck, the goalie and nobody else — no defender close enough to interfere. A penalty shot is a breakaway awarded by the referee, taken from centre ice. A shootout is a series of penalty shots used to settle a tied regular-season game. All three are the same skill, and in most rec leagues the shootout decides games, so it is worth practising on purpose rather than improvising.

The goaltender's half of this — what they are trying to do to you — is in Goaltender. Read it. Knowing what the goalie has been coached to do is most of the advantage available to you, and everything below is written against it.

The one thing that decides it: who moves first

A well-coached goalie meets you out, retreats with you on C-cuts to keep the angle closed, stays on their feet as long as possible, and watches the puck rather than your body. Their entire plan is to make you commit first. Yours is the mirror image: make them commit first. Every technique below is a way of buying that.

If neither of you commits, you run out of ice and lose — so you cannot simply wait. You need a way to force the decision.

Approach speed — slower than you think

Arrive at the top of the circles with less speed than you feel like carrying. Speed is the enemy of a breakaway for three reasons:

• It shortens your decision window. At full flight you get roughly one option; at three-quarter pace you get to see the goalie's depth, change your mind and still execute.
• It hands the goalie their easiest read. A shooter flying in on a straight line has told them exactly where they will be in half a second, which is precisely what a retreating goalie needs.
• A deke needs room to happen in. You cannot pull the puck across your body and get it back if you are already past the post.

A change of pace beats raw pace. Come in hard to the blue line, then ease off through the top of the circles and accelerate again as you make your move. The deceleration pulls the goalie out of their retreat rhythm; the re-acceleration arrives before they have re-set. That single pattern is worth more than any hand skill.

Deception — take their eyes off the puck

What the goalie has been told to watch is a genuine coaching split (see Goaltender): one school says watch the puck and treat everything above it as theatre; another says watch the shooter's chest and hips rather than the stick or the eyes. Either way, head and shoulder fakes are the cheapest thing you can sell and the first thing a good goalie discounts. Make the deception something they cannot dismiss — the puck's position, or your hips:

• Look where you are not going. Head and eyes to one corner, puck to the other. Cheap, and it still works at every level below professional.
• Sell a shot to open the five-hole. Drop your bottom hand, load the shaft, and watch what the pads do. A goalie who respects the shot gets bigger and stops moving — which is the moment a deke is on.
• Sell a deke to get the shot. Pull the puck wide to your forehand with your head up and they will start the lateral push. Shoot into the space they have just opened.
• Change the puck's position, not just your body's. Moving the puck from in front of you to your hip, or from forehand to backhand and back, forces a genuine re-read. A shoulder dip does not.
• Do not decide before you can see them. Deciding at the blue line is the commonest breakaway error, because you are then executing a plan against a goalie position you never actually looked at.

The classic moves, and what each one is for

None of these is a trick. Each solves a specific goalie behaviour, and picking the one that matches what you are seeing is the whole skill.

One personal go-to, executed without thinking, beats five you half-know. Pick one move as your default and drill it until it needs no decision, then add a second that goes the other way.

Where to shoot

The targets are not the same as on a normal shot, because the goalie is moving and often deep.

• Blocker side, high is the classic breakaway target: the hardest place for a goalie to get a hand to while retreating.
• Five-hole while they are pushing sideways — the hole is open during the push, not before it and not after.
• Short side high when they have over-committed to taking away the middle. Small window; it is there or it is not.
• Far side low if you have cut across the middle and they are still sliding.
• Not the middle of their chest. That is where the puck goes when you shoot without looking.

Look at the goalie, not at the puck, in the last two strides. You cannot aim at a hole you have not seen.

Shoot or deke?

The honest answer is that it depends on one read: how deep is the goalie, and are they moving?

• Goalie out at the top of the crease or beyond, coming at you → deke. They have given you the room and they cannot recover laterally from out there.
• Goalie deep in the net, square and patient → shoot. There is no room to go around, and a deke against a deep goalie just walks you into the post.
• Goalie retreating and not yet set → shoot early. The best moment on any breakaway is often the one before you get to your "spot".
• You are being caught from behind → shoot now. A backchecker's stick arrives sooner than you think. See Puck Handling on why hands are the smallest contributor to beating a defender: if you have a step, use it rather than spending it on a move.

At rec level, shoot more than you deke. Rec goalies are far more likely to be deep, flat-footed and square than out and aggressive, and a deke against a deep goalie has almost nowhere to finish.

The rules you must know before you take one

Verified against the NHL Official Rules 2025-2026, Rule 24 (Penalty Shot) and Rule 84.4 (Shootout), which applies Rule 24 to shootout attempts:

• The puck must be kept in motion towards the opponent's goal line. You cannot stop, circle back or curl away to reset. Once you shoot, the play is complete.
• No goal can be scored on a rebound of any kind — with one exception: puck off the post or crossbar, then off the goalkeeper, then directly in. So there is no second chance; the first touch has to be the one.
• The shot is over the moment the puck crosses the goal line or comes to a complete stop.
• The spin-o-rama is not permitted. If you complete a 360° turn on the approach, the referee stops the shot and it is no goal.
• The lacrosse-style move is permitted — picking the puck up on the blade and whipping it — provided the puck is never raised above shoulder height and is not carried higher than the crossbar when released.
• The goalie must stay in their crease until you touch the puck. If they leave early and you do not score, you shoot again.
• In a shootout each team gets three shooters, then sudden death; no player may shoot twice until everyone eligible has shot. Once it starts, the opposing goalie cannot be replaced unless injured, and a substitute gets no warm-up shots.
• There is no clock. Neither Rule 24 nor Rule 84.4 sets a time limit on the approach, so any "you have N seconds" you hear is folklore. Take the time.

How to practise it

• Take breakaways at the end of every practice, against a real goalie, keeping score. Shooting on an empty net teaches you nothing about this.
• Practise your one go-to move until it is automatic, then a second in the opposite direction.
• Practise the approach, not just the finish — start from your own blue line so you rehearse the change of pace, not only the last ten feet.
• Alternate: shoot, deke, shoot, deke, so you are not building a habit the goalie can read.

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When NOT to Shoot

A "shoot-first mentality" is good. Forcing low-percentage shots is not. Shoot-first means your default look is the net, you do not need talking into it, and you take the good chance immediately rather than hunting a better one — a genuinely valuable trait most amateurs lack. Forcing means you shoot because you have the puck, not because there is a chance; that is a turnover with extra steps.

Do not shoot when:

• There is no lane. A shot into shins is a turnover. Move the puck and get a lane.
• A teammate is in the slot and you are not. This is the big one. Your perimeter shot converts at 2–4%; their slot shot converts at 10–15%. The pass is worth roughly three to five times your shot. Make it.
• The goalie is completely set and square and you are outside the dots with no traffic. This is close to the highest-percentage save in hockey. (A figure of "97-plus percent" circulates for it, from Clear Sight Analytics via secondary reporting — unverified, proprietary, and not checkable against a primary source. The point does not need the number: perimeter shots overall convert at 2–4%, which is sourced, and a clean, set, unscreened look from out there is the worst subset of that.) Unless you have net-front bodies to shoot for, this shot has almost no value.
• You are the last player back and a miss goes the other way. See Risk Management. A wide shot from the point with nobody covering is how odd-man rushes get born.
• The shot would end a possession you are winning. If your line is cycling and the other team is tired and pinned, a bad shot resets everything. Sometimes the right play is another five seconds of possession.

The test: before you shoot, ask what happens if this does not go in? If the answer is "rebound in the slot for my winger" or "tip chance" or "we recover it in the corner," shoot. If the answer is "it goes off a shin pad and they break out," do not.

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Equipment Factors

Brief, because the detail lives in Equipment.

• Flex — the number on the shaft, roughly the force in pounds needed to bend it a set distance. Flex is how much of your shot's power comes from the stick rather than your arms. Too stiff and you cannot bend it at all, so you lose the spring entirely and your shot is arms-only. Too soft and the shaft over-bends, energy is wasted flapping the shaft, and accuracy suffers. Roughly right feels like the stick loading noticeably during a wrist shot without feeling like a whip. Smaller and younger players are almost always in sticks that are too stiff for them.
• Curve — the bend in the blade. A deeper curve lifts the puck more easily and helps with toe drags and quick elevation, at the cost of backhand control and low-shot accuracy. A flatter curve gives you a better backhand and better control of low shots. A toe curve favours quick releases and shots off the toe; a mid curve is more forgiving and more accurate on a full sweep.
• Lie — the angle between the blade and the shaft, which determines whether the blade sits flat on the ice in your natural stance. If the toe or the heel is off the ice when you are in your stance, your blade contact is wrong on every shot and no amount of technique fixes it. Check yours: stand naturally in skates, look at the blade, and see whether the whole bottom edge is touching.

Do not chase equipment as a substitute for reps. A correctly sized stick removes an obstacle; it does not add a skill.

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How to Practise

Shooting is the most trainable skill in hockey because you can practise it almost entirely off the ice, alone, in a garage.

Off-ice setup. A shooting pad (a slick synthetic sheet, typically around 60 cm by 120 cm, or 2 ft by 4 ft), a net or a target board, and a bucket of pucks. Steel-tip protection or an old stick, because concrete will destroy a blade. That is the whole kit and it is inexpensive.

Volume versus deliberate practice. Both matter, and they are not the same:

• Volume builds the motor pattern. Hundreds of repetitions of the same shot, until the weight transfer and wrist roll happen without thought. There is no shortcut past this.
• Deliberate practice builds the skill you will actually use. That means: a specific target, a specific intention, and feedback on every rep. Ten shots at a named corner, checking each one, beats a hundred shots at the general area of the net.

The failure mode is doing only volume — a thousand comfortable wrist shots from the same spot, at the same speed, at nothing in particular. That makes you very good at one shot you will never take in a game.

What to actually do:

• Targets. Hang or prop something in the corners and five-hole. Missing must be visible and audible, or you will not correct it.
• Call the shot before you take it. "Low blocker." Then take it. Score it. Keep a count.
• Practise the release, not the power. Set a rule: no gathering. Puck arrives, shoot. Have someone pass to you, or bounce it off a rebounder.
• Move first. Stickhandle two touches, change the puck's position laterally, then shoot. Never shoot from a static, pre-set position — you will not get one in a game.
• Practise off both feet, including the "wrong" one.
• Practise the backhand every session. If you split forehand and backhand 50/50 for a month, your backhand will stop being a liability. Almost nobody does this, which is exactly why it works.
• Practise shots you dislike. Off-balance, one-handed extensions, pucks arriving behind you. Games are full of those; comfortable reps are not.
• On-ice, practise tips and rebounds. These cannot be trained on a garage pad and they produce a large share of real goals.

What improvement looks like. Honest expectations, and these are general coaching guidance rather than measured findings — treat them as a shape, not a schedule:

• Weeks 1–4: mechanics start to feel natural; power improves noticeably, mostly because your weight transfer stops being an afterthought.
• Months 2–3: release time drops meaningfully; you stop needing to gather. This is the change that shows up in games.
• Months 4–6: accuracy tightens; you can call a target and hit it more often than not; the backhand becomes usable.
• Beyond: the remaining gains are decision-making, not mechanics — shot selection, deception, and reading the goalie. Those are trained by playing and by watching, not by shooting at a garage door.

Fifteen to twenty minutes a day of focused work beats two hours on a Sunday. See Practice and Development for how to build this into a wider training plan.

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Common Mistakes

• Slapping at the puck instead of sweeping it. A wrist shot never loses contact with the blade. If you hear a click, you took a bad snap shot by accident.
• Shooting with arms only. No weight transfer means no power, and no amount of upper-body strength fixes it. Power comes from legs and torso through a bending stick.
• Hitting the puck directly on a slap shot. You are supposed to hit the ice two to five centimetres behind it. Miss that and your slap shot is slower than your wrist shot.
• Stopping your feet before shooting. The clearest tell in hockey. Every goalie and every defender reads it.
• Gathering the puck before every shot. The settle-look-plant-shoot sequence gives away half a second, which is the entire margin you were working with.
• Aiming for corners by default. Small targets, guarded by the fastest-moving parts of the goalie, and a miss produces nothing. Five-hole, low blocker and rebound-creation are worth more.
• Shooting into shin pads. The most common wasted play in the game. Look for the lane first; change the angle if there isn't one.
• Full wind-ups from the point with traffic in the lane. You have announced the shot and it is getting blocked. Low snap shot, through, every time.
• Shooting from above the circles because you have the puck. The two elite shooters this document names — Kane and Laine — scored under 2% of their goals from there. That is two named players in one analyst's article, drawn from Sportlogiq tracking that is not public, not a league-wide rate. The direction is the point: you will score fewer.
• Perimeter shots when a teammate is in the slot. You are choosing a 2–4% chance over a 10–15% one — a coaching-consensus range whose source names no dataset, so trust the gap rather than the decimals.
• High point shots when your team is screening for a tip. Unusable. Knee-height or lower.
• Never practising the backhand. It is the shot goalies read worst and the one you are most likely to face in tight, and you have decided to be bad at it.
• Bracing hard on a tip. Stiff hands fire the puck to the corner. Soft hands drop it at your feet for a second chance.
• Blaming the stick. Get the flex and lie roughly right, then stop thinking about it.

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Key Takeaways

1. Release speed beats shot speed. A goalie stops what they are set for. Getting the puck away before they are ready is worth more than any amount of velocity.
2. The snap shot is your best shot in most situations — nearly slap-shot power with nearly wrist-shot release. If you are inside the dots, it is probably the right choice.
3. Blade face angle at release sets the height; follow-through is how you control it. Finish low for a low shot, finish high for a high one — that is the cue that puts the face where you need it. You do not aim with your eyes.
4. The slap shot is overused. It is slow to load, easy to read, easy to block, and a missed one from the point hands over possession. Use a three-quarter version or a low snap shot instead.
5. Location is most of shot value. One widely cited breakdown puts slot shots at roughly 10–15% and perimeter shots at 2–4%. The exact figures vary by data set; the gap does not. Getting to the middle is worth more than any technical improvement you can make.
6. Make the goalie move sideways, or take away their sight. A shot after a pass across the middle, or through a screen, is worth several times the same shot from the same spot with a clear, set goalie. Screening is legal from outside the blue paint and without contact — but under Rule 69.1 your positioning alone can void the goal if it stops the goalie moving or defending, wherever your skates are. Take away their eyes, not their room.
7. Changing direction beats adding speed. A tipped puck redirected six inches in front of the goalie beats a rocket they read from the blue line.
8. Shoot to create, not just to finish. With traffic at the net, a hard low shot at the pads has three good outcomes — goal, tip, rebound. A shot at a corner has one.
9. Shooting into shin pads is the most common wasted play in hockey. Find the lane, or change the angle until there is one, or move the puck.
10. Practise the backhand and practise the release. Nobody does either, both are pure volume problems, and both directly beat goalies.

Sources — retrieved 27 July 2026

Shooting technique: HockeyMonkey — Wrist Shot Guide · HockeyMonkey — Backhand Shot Guide · How To Hockey — How to Take a Snapshot · Better Hockey — Four Types of Hockey Shots · HockeyShot — Four Types of Shots · Online Hockey Training — Hockey Shooting Techniques · Sniper's Edge — Putting More Power Into Your Backhand

Release, deception and shot selection: HockeyMonkey — How NHL Scorers Use Deception and Quick Release · Ice Hockey Systems — 4 Shooting Techniques To Score More Goals

Shot quality and expected goals: The Coaches Site — Shot Distribution: The Importance of Getting Shots from High Quality Areas · The Point — Shot Optimization · Hockey's Arsenal — Shot Quantity or Shot Quality? · Alan Ryder — Shot Quality (hockeyanalytics.com)

Royal road and goalie sightlines: Kevin Woodley — "Unmasked: Analytics provide new evaluation tools", NHL.com, 18 December 2014 — Valiquette quoted directly on the 76% green-shot share and the 30% royal-road share; the "less than half a second to see" wording and the zone-limited description of the royal road are Woodley's, not direct quotations from Valiquette. The original NHL.com URL now 404s, so the Internet Archive capture of 24 September 2015 is linked · Blue Seat Blogs — Taking a Look at Steve Valiquette's "Royal Road" · OMHA — The Most Important Line on the Ice You've Never Heard Of · InGoal Magazine — A Guide to the Data of Clear Sight Analytics · Clear Sight Analytics — Glossary of Terms — checked for the "97-plus percent" figure, which is not there

Equipment: HockeyMonkey — Hockey Stick Flex Guide

Rules: NHL Official Rules 2025-2026 (PDF) — Rule 24.2 (Penalty Shot – Procedure: puck kept in motion, no goal on a rebound, spin-o-rama prohibited, lacrosse-style move permitted below shoulder/crossbar height, goalkeeper confined to crease), Rule 69.1 (Interference on the Goalkeeper), 69.3 (Contact Inside the Goal Crease), 69.4 (Contact Outside the Goal Crease), 80.1 and 80.3 (High-sticking the Puck – Disallowed Goal), Rule 84.4 (Shootout – three shooters then sudden death, no player shoots twice until all eligible have shot, goalkeeper not replaceable once it begins and no warm-up for a substitute). Quoted and verified against the local primary text on 27 July 2026.