When it comes to stopping a scorer in a one-on-one situation, NHL goalies are better than they’ve ever been.

The league-wide save percentage has dipped in recent years — steadily declining from .910 in 2019-20 to .900 this season — as offensive strategies improve and shooters find ways to beat goalies with screens, deflections and backdoor plays. Beating a goaltender with a clean shot has become incredibly difficult.

Listen to the dressing room conversations after a team is shut out. You’ll hear players and coaches parrot the same reasons for the lack of goals.

“We needed more bodies in front of the net.”

“We didn’t get in the goalie’s eyes enough.”

“Goalies are too good nowadays. If they see the shot, they stop it.”

To an extent, these commonly-used phrases are true. Modern goalies are such good skaters that they’re usually in excellent position, giving shooters very little net to shoot at. They’ve trained their entire lives, specializing in reading shots, so it takes something truly exceptional to get the puck past them when they have their feet set and clear vision of the shot.

In response, today’s elite scorers are finding ways to use these goalies’ reads against them. They pick up on the clues goalies are using to predict shot locations, and then give the netminder false information in an attempt to fool them. Being an elite scorer is becoming less about who can shoot the puck the hardest, or even the most accurately, and more about who can conceal their true intentions and mislead the opposition with deception.

We’ll look at specific examples of these subtle acts of deception, and why they’re so effective, by examining four of the league’s craftiest goal-scorers: Sidney Crosby, Nikita Kucherov, William Nylander and Kyle Connor.

First, it’s important to understand how goalies react to shots. The term “lightning-quick reflexes” is often overstated. Yes, these netminders have exceptional reaction time, but the human body has limitations. A study by Harvard University showed that the average human reaction time is 220 milliseconds, and the average recognition reaction time is 384 milliseconds.

An 80-mph shot from the point (55 feet away from the net) reaches the goalie in less than 470 milliseconds. A shot of the same speed from the middle of the slot (20 feet away from the net) reaches the goalie in 170 milliseconds.

That means on most shots from in close, a goalie doesn’t have the time to actually see where the puck is being shot and then react to its flight. Most of the time, they are reading the shooter’s body language and stick blade to predict where the shot is going. After seeing thousands and thousands of shots over their lifetimes, goalies become incredible at it, giving the illusion that they’re actually reacting to the puck. The truth is, if a shooter simulated a shot without an actual puck, the goalie would still know where the “shot” was heading in most instances.

On this goal Crosby scored on March 11, he took the way Vegas Golden Knights goalie Ilya Samsonov read the blade of his stick and used it to his advantage.

Crosby is as crafty as they come, and has plenty of time and space on this play. The deception is so subtle that it’s difficult to notice without slow motion, but watch how Crosby opens his stick blade wide just before releasing the shot. Everything about this release tells Samsonov that Crosby is likely shooting high to the blocker side, but with a quick flick of the wrist, Crosby turns down the toe of his stick blade at the last moment and rifles a low shot just inside Samsonov’s left skate.

If you look closely, you can even see Samsonov’s blocker flinch to his right, where he anticipated the shot would go. The minor weight transfer that a goalie makes when leaning into a blocker save means that his opposite leg will typically be slower getting to the ice, which is why Crosby shot to the short side. It’s a simple-looking goal with a lot happening beneath the surface.

Kucherov uses a similar form of deception, especially on breakaways. This goal he scored against the Penguins on Jan. 12 is a great example of a move he often uses to beat goalies in one-on-one situations.

Kucherov fans his stick blade open, very similar to Crosby in the previous clip, and doesn’t close the toe until midway through the release. Because the change is so late, he regularly leaves goalies flashing their blocker way out to their side, only for Kucherov to curl the puck inside, underneath their armpit, like he does to Tristan Jarry on this play.

The initial deke to pull the puck outside of his body is crucial because it gets the goalie off-angle. When Kucherov had the puck directly in front of him, Jarry was perfectly on angle with the line from the puck to the center of the net running straight through the middle of his chest. That quickly changed when Kucherov pulled the puck outside, giving an edge to the shooter.

You can see how much room there is to the short side after Kucherov pulls the puck outside, and it’s probably why goalies throw their blocker out so aggressively when he shoots. They can sense that they’re off the angle and expect the puck to go between their blocker and the post. Instead of shooting at that opening, Kucherov anticipates the goalie’s next move and shoots where the next opening will be.

He’d pulled the same move the night before against Devils goalie Jacob Markstrom. Markstrom stabs his blocker out aggressively, only for Kucherov to tuck the puck inside it with his late toe curl.

Kucherov has mastered this trick to the point where it feels almost unfair to the goalie. It’s his go-to move on breakaways. Part of what makes it so effective is his speed. Few players approach these situations at the speed Kucherov does, which only makes it more difficult for the goalie to read him.

Here he is scoring on Columbus’ Elvis Merzlikins and Philadelphia’s Ivan Fedotov with the same move on March 4 and March 17. It’s no coincidence that every one of these goalies over-extends their blocker. Kucherov is baiting them into it with slight manipulation of his stick blade, combined with the fact that the deke gets the goalies off their angle.

There’s a reason Kucherov has outscored his expected goals metrics in nine of the last 10 seasons, according to Evolving-Hockey. Expected goals models are based on how often players score on a shot given the location and several other factors, but it doesn’t account for shooting skill, which Kucherov has in abundance.

Elite scorers use more than just the stick blade to mislead goalies. Maple Leafs star Nylander has been duping netminders with a kicking motion that he uses quite often. Here’s an example of him using a high kick with his trail leg on this overtime winner against the Devils on Jan. 16.

This move isn’t unique to Nylander. It’s a standard off-leg shot with the left leg (in Nylander’s case because he’s right-handed) hiking into the air to gain leverage and add velocity to the snap shot. It’s a technique mostly used when skating in stride, because it allows for a quicker release, and more often than not it’s used on high shots, such as the one Nylander beat Markstrom with on this play.

Here’s where it starts to get tricky. Nylander has realized that goalies are reading the off-leg snap shots, and is now starting to turn that against them. On this goal – which also happened to come against New Jersey – Nylander kicks the leg up, but shoots the puck along the ice.

You can see Devils goalie Jake Allen react as if the shot is going high-glove. Not only does Nylander kick his leg, his follow-through is mimicking a high shot. If Allen had correctly read that it was going to be a low shot, he would’ve driven his knees into the ice and sealed his butterfly. Instead, he reaches his glove out and his left pad is late to seal, and that’s exactly where Nylander scores.

Up in Winnipeg, Connor is having another excellent season. He’s one of the most under-appreciated scorers in the league, with at least 30 goals in all eight of his full NHL seasons (excluding the shortened 2020-21 season, when he still almost hit the mark).

Connor’s biggest weapon is a ridiculously fast release that is tough for goalies to read. He uses a CCM Ribcor stick with a P92 “Sakic” curve, named after Avalanche Hall of Famer Joe Sakic. It’s the most iconic stick curve and the most popular among NHL players, with a bit of an open toe to promote higher shots.

One of the biggest keys for Connor is the 85 flex in the stick shaft. It’s not the flimsiest stick in the NHL, but it’s on the more flexible side. That allows him to whip the puck at high velocity without putting a ton of weight or pressure into the stick. His upright shooting style gives goaltenders little warning that a shot is coming, and it regularly catches them off-guard.

He did it Monday night against Vancouver, casually zipping a shot by Canucks goalie Thatcher Demko in transition.

There’s very little shoulder dip or forward body lean prior to the shot, which makes it difficult for Demko to anticipate. It’s also a bit out of rhythm, which is a difficult concept to describe but makes a shot feel as though it’s coming out of nowhere for the goalie. In this instance, Connor shoots off of his outside (right) leg, which is typically accompanied by a lowering of the upper body as the player jumps from his inside to outside leg, building energy and leverage.

Demko has some of the best footwork of any goalie in the NHL, and yet Connor still catches him between shuffles. Shooting the puck just a half beat before the goalie expects it can make all the difference.

Connor also uses more obvious forms of deception to maximize his quick release and catch goalies off guard, like this no-look shot that tricked San Jose goalie Alexandar Georgiev on Dec. 17.

Georgiev knows there are several passing threats on the backside of the play (both Cole Perfetti in the low slot and Mark Scheifele near the far post) so he’s already hyper-aware of a cross-seam pass. When Connor glances to the middle of the ice as he loads his stick for the shot, it clearly throws the goalie off. Georgiev doesn’t cheat positionally by flattening out along his goal line. He’s still square to the puck, but he shifts his weight onto his left leg to prepare for a lateral explosion across the crease in the event of a pass.

Because of that, when Connor shoots high to the short side, Georgiev makes an awkward looking stab at the puck with his glove without even dropping into the butterfly. The reason the save attempt looks so strange is Georgiev’s weight transfer is not where it would normally be due to the threat of the pass, amplified by Connor’s head fake.

With the skill and intelligence of the modern goaltender, shooters are relying more and more on deception. The days of winding up and ripping shots past the goalie with sheer velocity are long gone. Lateral passing plays, deflections and screens will still be the most efficient way to score, but when a shooter faces a goalie mano a mano, deception is king.

(Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic; Photos: Mark LoMoglio, Mark Blinch, Daniel Bartel, Jaylynn Nash / Getty Images)