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Shooting-angle study

What the Puck Sees

What this is

A goaltender’s job is decided by geometry before anyone moves. Drag the puck anywhere in the zone and see how much net is really there to shoot at — including what the posts themselves take away.

Where the puck is

Drag it anywhere

Turn your phone sideways for a bigger rink.

A B

The puck’s point of view

Dashed = the full 4×6
The goal mouth as the puck sees it from here NEAR FAR Behind the goal line — no net
6.0ft wide

the whole 6 ft mouth

23.9sq ft

100% of 24 sq ft

Near post reads
4.00 ft
Far post reads
4.00 ft
Angle off centre
4°
Range to the net
20.1 ft
The posts themselves eat
0.00 sq ft
Puck height
1 in off the ice
Drag the puck. Every number here moves with it.
Jump to
Run a path — watch the numbers move
In the net
1.5 ft
1 in

What you are looking at

A regulation mouth is 72″ wide and 48″ high — 24 square feet, and that number is true only from dead square on. Everywhere else the net is a shape leaning away from you.

The sq ft figure is the exact solid angle of the opening, converted back into the square-on net it would equal. With normalise distance ticked it is measured against the square-on net at the same range, so range divides out and what is left is angle alone — 100% means square on, from a foot away or from the blue line.

Untick it and the comparison is against the net seen from 20 ft instead. Now range counts: the same mouth shrinks as you back off and grows past 24 sq ft as you close in. That is the setting for watching a puck walk straight in from the blue line, where the angle never changes at all.

The drawing’s scale is eased rather than literal, so the view from distance stays big enough to read the shape. The square-feet figure beside it is the exact one.

Why the net tilts

Both posts are 4 ft. From anywhere but the middle they do not read that way: the near post stands taller and the far post shrinks behind it. From the faceoff dot the near post reads about 4.3 ft against the far post’s 3.7 ft, and walking down toward the goal line the ratio runs past three to one.

Width is the same idea sideways — how wide a square-on net would have to be to look this wide from here. It tracks 6 × cos θ closely.

The posts are not lines

The 72″ is measured inside the posts, so square on the posts take nothing at all — the readout says 0.00. Off angle is different. Real posts are 2⅜″ round tube, thick front-to-back as well as side-to-side, and a shooter to the side is not looking square at the goal-line plane. A ray aimed at the very inside edge of the near post arrives on the slant and clips the tube before it gets there.

From the faceoff dot that costs about 1%. Down at the goal line it takes a third to a half of what is left, and close enough to the goal line the mouth shuts completely, where a thin-post model still shows a sliver.

The crossbar is modelled the same way. From any puck height the sightline reaches the top corner from underneath and the bar sits entirely above it, so that term always comes out at zero.

The goalie

A 6″0″ goalie in a set stance. He splits the net the puck can see: his centreline sits on the line that halves the visible mouth, he faces straight down it, and the depth slider moves him out along that line.

Sq ft open is measured from the same 3D figure you see: the mouth the posts leave is traced from the puck twice, with and without him, and every sightline he blocks comes off. What is still red in the picture is what is left.

Goalie model generated with Meshy, used under CC BY 4.0.

What it still does not model

  • The goaltender moving. He holds one stance and stays square to the puck. Standing deliberately off square on a sharp angle, going down, or sealing the post are not modelled yet.
  • The mesh and the back frame, which obscure a little more behind the goal line.
  • Anything about the shooter: release point, handedness, or whether the shot is available at all.

Dimensions are NHL: 200 × 85 ft with a 28 ft corner radius, goal line 11 ft off the end boards, faceoff dots 20 ft out and 22 ft either side, 15 ft circles. The boards run straight until 17 ft above the goal line, then turn.

This is experimental — tell us what you find

It is a working model we are still building, published early on purpose so goalies and coaches can pull it apart. It is not a coaching authority: the goaltender is a fixed stance at a size you can check, not a model of how he actually plays.

If a number looks off, or there is a situation you want it to handle, we want to hear it. That feedback is what turns this into something worth keeping.

Tell us what you found