How does the file look like?

The excel file has two sheets.

• The first one called “Tool” serves as input mask and result sheet at once.
• The second sheet “FloorballField” is a second input mask to set the shooting positions on the field.

How do I prepare the file for a calculation?

• Enter your knee width in cell C5 (Sheet “Tool”)
• Decide how many shot positions you want to analyse (C7:C11). To consider a shot position change “no” to “yes”
• Chose a shooting position
• Go to sheet “FloorballField” and insert a number between 1 to 5 on the field. The number defines the shooting position that you defined before
• Go back to the sheet “Tool” and click the button “Determine Cover Ratio”
• DONE

What are the results?

The tool delivers you two charts and a table. The first chart shows you a floorball field and the respective shots marked as arrows with two lines. On each shooting line are four bullets that represents the position of the determination of the cover ratio. The determined cover ratio can be seen in the result table. The closest bullet to the goal is minimum depth that a goalie needs to be squared. With this being said, the tool always considers that the goalie moves along the shooting line and does not consider any covering of a short or long post. In other words, if a striker runs towards the goal with a very tilted angle, the floorball goalie has to come out farther that one knee is not in the goal anymore (s. image).

Results of the tool

Let’s talk about a few results that we get from this tool. Please note, that in this post we write only in the female first person singular.

Two shots direct from the front

The first analysis considers two shots directly from the front. The first shot comes from the edge of the box and the second 2 meters farther back.

How does the reduced distance of the first shot increase the cover ratio of the floorball goalie when the goalie moves out of the goal?

Close to the goalie line, the cover ratio is the same. However, when the floorball goalie moves one meter out of the goal and is with his knees on the security box line, the cover ratio of shot 1 increases from 50% (assumption 0.8m knee width) to around 75%. This is already 10% higher compared to the 2nd shot further back. If the floorball goalie moves additional 0.7m towards, she already covers the total goal of the 1st shot. The total coverage of the 2nd shot happens when the floorball goalie moves 2.7m out of the goal. The result of this analysis is that as closure the striker get to the goal as a more import role does the depth is playing. This tell us that when we realize that a striker shoots, we should decrease the depth immediately to increase the coverage of our body.

One shot in the middle of the slot

The second analysis considers a shot from the centre of the slot.

The coverage on the goalie line is still the same. However, the coverage increases massively when the goalie moves out of the goal to decrease the depth. Moving 0.5 meters out of the goal already increases the coverage by 20% to 70% and a further movement to the edge of the box finally covers around 110%, which means no flat shot should lead to a goal. If a goalie decides to further decrease the depth, she maximizes the over coverage of the goal but makes it easier for the striker to pass by you with a quick stick handling. We guess a skilled striker is way faster with a stick compared to our reposition slide push or pull skill as a goalie. Therefore, we come to the conclusion that it is important to reach the right distance to the player to cover as much as possible from the goal (even over coverage) and still be able to act on repositions of the striker.

Shots from different angles with the same distance to the goal

The analysis focuses on the dependency of depth and angles for shots with the same distance to the goal. In other words, how does a shot from a tighter angle effects the coverage of a goalie when she decreases the depth.

When we take a look at the results, we see that the goalie has to go further out of the goal to be squared to the shot. At the same time, the width of the goal gets tighter for the striker as tighter the angle gets which is a benefit for us. When the striker shots from position 4, the goalie only has to decrease the depth by 0.7m to get a full coverage of the goal. From shooting position 3 it is around 1m.

Summary

As you see, this tool gives you many opportunities to analyse different shooting positions and combinations. On basis of the three scenarios from this post, we come to the following results:

• The closer a striker is, the higher gets the coverage when the goalie decides to decrease the depth
• “We do not have to sit on the blade of a striker to cover the goal efficient”. This means, we need to find good distance between striker and goalie to cover the goal and still be able to react to the strikers movement
• As tighter the angle the less the goalie has to decrease the depth to cover the goal 100%. This means the goalie is closer to the goal and has a lower adaption if a crossover happens.

Try it out and tell us your experience with the tool. We are proud of it.