The science of Dylan Guenther's shot: How Utah Hockey Club forward is evolving into elite goal scorer
It is difficult to trace the origin of Dylan Guenther’s superlative shot.
As a kid, he didn’t have an elaborate shooting gallery in his basement like the one teammate Clayton Keller battered with pucks.
“I used Shooter Tutor sometimes, but to be honest, I didn’t like it because then you’d have to fish the pucks out,” the Utah Hockey forward said, laughing. “I just had a net and these two pillars that I guess held the house up. I would shoot around them and get passes and pull the puck or push it.”
Guenther is quick to note that he worked with plenty of skills coaches growing up in Edmonton, including the late Ray Podloski, a 1984 Boston Bruins draft pick who passed along that signature back-leg kick that you see on many of Guenther’s shots.
But basement reps and skills coaches don’t fully explain the shot that earned Guenther the nickname Gunner. Blend a tireless desire for improvement with a willingness to experiment and you might get a little closer to the answer.
“There’s a lot of pieces to it,” said Utah Hockey Club skills development consultant Brian Slugocki, who worked with Guenther last season in Tucson, again when Slugocki was in Salt Lake City earlier this season, and again during Guenther’s most recent rehab stint. “His hands and what he can do with his upper body are among the top two or three shooters I’ve ever worked with. It’s just how fast and how violently he can whip his hands.
“But he’s also very good at using different parts of his blade to release the puck, and that’s not something that a lot of players are good at. The benefit of being able to use any part of your blade is you don’t have to wait for it to get into your exact sweet spot. He can open the blade and use the heel to do like a pop-shot. He can get it on his toe and take more of a snapshot.
“A lot of players aren’t comfortable trying different releases or trying different shots because there’s going to be a period when they suck at it. Dylan is comfortable experimenting. For me as a coach, that’s one of the best things about working with him.”
Guenther reached the 20-goal mark just before the 4 Nations Face-Off break when he scored a second-period goal against the Capitals in Washington on Feb. 9. It was his fourth goal (seven points) in four games since returning from a lower-body injury, and it helped Utah win for the third time in those four games (he had the game-winning goal in the first two of them).
Utah is going to need a lot more from Guenther as it hits the home stretch of the regular season with a back-to-back set this weekend against Los Angeles and Vancouver; two teams it is chasing in the Western Conference wild card race.
“When he’s out of our lineup, we miss his goals. It’s the difference between winning or losing,” GM Bill Armstrong said. “He’s obviously got a natural shot. The way it comes off his stick, I think it’s hard for goaltenders to pick up.”
There are plenty of details behind that deceit. Slugocki and Guenther elaborated on some of them.
First, there is the power that Guenther generates.
“Shooting is a full body motion, but a lot of players only use their hands to shoot it, which is a mistake,” Slugocki said. “It should be a violent, full-body motion where everything is shooting the puck. He encapsulates that.”
Some of Guenther’s power comes from that big leg kick.
“I like to shoot like that so I can put my whole body into it because I’m not that big of a guy,” he said. “You see a lot of younger players like Auston Matthews and Connor Bedard shoot like that.”
The stick he uses is also a factor: the Bauer Vapor Flylite.
“It’s an older model,” he said. “It’s a little heavier than the new ones that feel a little flimsy to me. I haven’t changed my stick in five years and I have never changed my curve.”
Then there are the tricks of the trade.
There’s **the pull shot** that he is working on right now, shown in this off-ice video from Tucson. The move changes the release point of the shot, forcing goalies to adjust and possibly open up scoring holes.
“As a righty, he is going from right leg to left leg while pulling the puck in towards his body before releasing it,” Slugocki said. “Notice how his hands are away and off his body which helps him create more flex on his stick.”
Guenther is also working on **shooting off lateral moves**, again so that the goaltender must move and open up scoring holes.
This is a skill that Matthews, another player with whom Slugocki works, has mastered.
“When you watch Auston on a lateral move, he’s shifting from one foot to the other, stepping, almost dancing with his footwork,” Slugocki said. “A lot of players when they shoot, their feet stop and they get in a very predictable pattern that a goalie can read. Here, you have no idea when the shot is coming.”
And then **there is the heel shot**, which Guenther has mastered. The overtime goal he scored against the Islanders on Oct. 10 is a classic example — a goal about which there is a lot to like, including Guenther’s ability to slow up and find the open ice, and then feel the pressure from behind and step up to give himself space to shoot.
“The benefit of doing this, especially when the puck is out in front of you, is you’re able to release it out of nowhere,” Slugocki said. “It’s a saucer shot. It’s very quick, and this is one of his shots that really separates him. A lot of guys can’t do this with this sort of quickness and accuracy.
“It gets up very quickly so it’s very good for getting over a goalie’s shoulders, and it doesn’t really give anything away because you can do it inside of your stickhandling so it’s a very surprising shot.”
It’s fair to wonder how many goals Guenther might score in a season when he hits his prime, but the 21-year-old doesn’t set statistical goals for himself. That doesn’t mean he lacks drive. Guenther’s approach to the game, and his ability to turn every perceived setback or demotion into fuel are now viewed within the organization as one of his greatest assets.
“I think he’s even better than before he got hurt — seriously,” coach André Tourigny said. “It’s a challenge sometimes for young guys to not get carried away with trying to produce and going away from the little details in their game. But since he’s back, he is really detailed, playing really good on his 200-foot game.”
Guenther said he used the rehab period as a mental break, as well as an opportunity to gain back some of the weight he lost during the grind of the season.
“Before I got hurt, I felt like I wasn’t playing my best hockey so I was able to just kind of reset,” he said. “I had never played that many games in a row before so I think just being more conscious of it and trusting that if I do pay a little bit more attention to the mental side, I’ll get more opportunities.”
Guenther’s 0.45 goals per game already rank 24th in the NHL, but he sees plenty of room for improvement.
“I find I miss the net a lot, and I get a lot of shots blocked, so that’s an area that I want to get a little bit better at,” he said. “I just think there’s always something that you can do to get a little better, and I’m just super competitive anyway. I want to be the best player that I can be, so just finding ways to keep improving is really kind of how I’ve always approached it.”
Having seen Guenther’s approach up close, Slugocki envisions much better days ahead.
“I believe he can be a prominent goal scorer in the NHL,” Slugocki said. “You already see flashes of it, you hear other commentators talk about it, and we haven’t even talked about his one-timer, which is very, very good.
“The crazy thing is he hasn’t even played a full season in the NHL yet and he’s already blowing people away with his shooting. I know it’s such a cliché, but the sky’s the limit for him.”
