Several of the Leafs' top-six forwards have career shooting percentages over what might be considered to be average. Our very own birky published this somewhat scary graph on Twitter:
Here's a rudimentary graph showing the evolution of the Leafs shooting percentage since Carlyle took over: pic.twitter.com/QAtRLyQ7jq
— birky (@b1rky) October 24, 2013
I suppose it's only really scary if you believe that the Leafs' shooting percentage is going to begin regressing in the near future. Maybe you believe that the Leafs' top six is just that good at shooting, and we can expect them to capitalize on more chances per capita than most, if not all teams in the league.
To put this idea to the test, I threw together a quick study. I took the career average 5v5 shooting percentage of every player in every team's top-six set of forwards (ranked by the top six forwards by 5v5 ice time on each team), and simply found the average Sh% for each group:
| Team | T6 Sh% |
| Chicago Blackhawks | 12.32 |
| Pittsburgh Penguins | 11.94 |
| Philadelphia Flyers | 11.88 |
| Tampa Bay Lighting | 11.43 |
| Boston Bruins | 11.38 |
| Edmonton Oilers | 10.94 |
| Toronto Maple Leafs | 10.93 |
| San Jose Sharks | 10.89 |
| Buffalo Sabres | 10.85 |
| Colorado Avalanche | 10.82 |
| Montreal Canadiens | 10.68 |
| New York Islanders | 10.65 |
| St. Louis Blues | 10.5 |
| Ottawa Senators | 10.3 |
| Washington Capitals | 10.3 |
| Columbus Blue Jackets | 10.29 |
| Calgary Flames | 10.17 |
| Dallas Stars | 10.17 |
| Vancouver Canucks | 9.81 |
| Florida Panthers | 9.69 |
| New Jersey Devils | 9.61 |
| Detroit Red Wings | 9.49 |
| New York Rangers | 9.45 |
| Nashville Predators | 9.37 |
| Anaheim Ducks | 9.33 |
| Phoenix Coyotes | 9.25 |
| Los Angeles Kings | 9.14 |
| Winnipeg Jets | 9.13 |
| Carolina Hurricanes | 9.09 |
| Minnesota Wild | 8.5 |
This little exercise is admittedly not without its faults. Perhaps using overall ice time and overall shooting percentage would have been better? Maybe expanding this to the teams' top nine forwards would be more instructive? I rather doubt that, but there are certainly a few different ways Sh% data could be examined. A weighted average could be used on how many shots per 60 minutes of play a player generates, for instance.
As of this moment, the 2013-14 Leafs' top six forwards by 5v5 ice time have 5v5 shooting percentages that look like this:
| James van Riemsdyk | 15 |
| Phil Kessel | 14.29 |
| Joffrey Lupul | 12.5 |
| Mason Raymond | 10.53 |
| Dave Bolland | 8.33 |
| Tyler Bozak | 0 |
So if everyone in this group regresses except Tyler Bozak...