Elias Pettersson: Creeping Inside the Dots

Elias Pettersson: Creeping Inside the Dots

Elias Pettersson is one of the NHL’s premier shooters and has done that for quite some time in the league now. When it comes to his shooting ability, his ability to pick holes in the net and find space in the net with his head up is premier, where he can pick a corner and quickly rip the puck past the goalie. Pettersson’s wrist shot is in large part what makes him a threat, especially when he is given space coming off the wall and looking to set up his shot on the inside of the dots.

When you give Pettersson time and space, he doesn’t need much time to set up his feet and weight transfer in a powerful way on his wrist shots. It almost looks effortless whne he shoots, because his wrist shot coming out of his hip pocket is like a lever that snaps off his stick almost instantly.

When it comes to Pettersson’s shooting ability, his vision is the most important factor when it comes to releasing the puck off his stick with purpose. He is really effective at not only scanning the net to find space up high on goalies, but releasing the puck really close to the side of the post that he wants to shoot at. He always seems to shoot really close to the post, where sometimes you see the puck just nick the edge of the post. It looks like it hits the post and goes in, but instead it’s just Pettersson shooting really close to the post instead.

We see this is a 5v3 sequence in favor of Vancouver here, where they look to create quick options and try to take advantage of the middle of the ice here. The puck bumps off the wall off the cross ice pass, and Pettersson quickly retrieves the puck and looks to move interior. Pettersson gets off the half wall, gets to middle ice, and creeps his way inside the dots slowly, giving him leverage in his hockey sense in this situation.

By slowing the sequence down and slowing his rhythm down with the puck it does multiple things:

  1. It forces SJS’s D coverage to also slow down and nearly come to a dead stop
  2. It allows SJS’s coverage to collapse middle, thinking Pettersson will look to pass
  3. That collapsed coverage opens the shot lane and closes the pass lane opportunity

That was perhaps the smartest thing Pettersson did here, which was slowing down and looking to creep just inside the dots. When I first saw this clip, knowing Pettersson and his cross seam passing in tandem with his poise, I figured he would look to pass cross seam because of how he was almost waiting for the lane to open up. By Pettersson slowing down, he collapses the SJS coverage even further into the middle, opening up the shot lane and negating a pass option.

Typically, defenders will take away the pass first instead of the shot, since it doesn’t require much movement for the goalie to adapt to, so it’s understandable why SJS took away the pass. When you have a premier shooter like Pettersson though, that is a very difficult thing to stop, because he can obviously shoot with extreme precision on net.

The pass option gets taken away, and Pettersson opts to shoot on net, which lands just on the inside of the far post without it hitting the post at all. You could argue Askarov could’ve been more aggressive toward the top of his crease, increasing posture and extension of his blocker and glove (with his blocker and glove moving forward and down) to try and make himself bigger in the net. However, the puck quickly gets wired past Askarov, and Pettersson showcasing his elite shot once again on this goal.


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