A penalty kill's job is to pick which shot they take

You cannot take everything away with four skaters, so the honest goal is to choose what you give up.

You cannot take everything away. Four against five, in a confined zone, against players chosen for their hands: something is going to be available. The whole craft of penalty killing is deciding what.

Most people watch a kill and see effort. Sticks in lanes, players sliding, a clearance that draws a cheer. What is actually happening is a set of deliberate concessions. A box that collapses tight has decided to give up the point shot and take away the seam pass. A diamond that pressures the top has decided the opposite: chase the puck at the blue line, accept that a cross-ice pass will sometimes get through, and bet that the power play will be forced into a rushed low-percentage attempt instead.

Neither is right in general. Both are right against particular opponents, which is the part I wish broadcasters explained. Against a unit built around a one-timer from the off wing, you sell out to break the seam and you happily let the point man shoot all night from forty feet, because a clean shot from there with your goalie seeing it is close to harmless. Against a unit that works below the goal line and lives on plays out of the corner, standing in a passive box is suicide, because they will walk the puck to the slot at their own pace.

The measure I would use is not shots allowed. It is the location of the shots allowed, and whether the puck moved across the middle of the ice before the shot. A pass that crosses the goalie's centre line forces a lateral push and a reset, and a goalie who has to move sideways before a shot is a much worse goalie than one who did not. Kill a penalty by conceding eight shots that never crossed the middle and you have done the job perfectly.

Stick position does more of the work than body position, which is a hard thing to teach because it is invisible from the stands. A killer with his blade flat on the ice in the passing lane is doing more than a killer squared up to the puck with his stick in the air.

The best kills look almost lazy. Nothing is happening because nothing has been allowed to be worth doing.