One of the more persistent debates in life, and especially in medicine, is the age-old question of quantity versus quality. Do you do more reps, send more emails, read more articles, take more call, see more patients, make more investments, and trust that volume eventually wins out? Or do you slow down, wait for the right opportunity, and focus on making fewer but better decisions? It is a debate that shows up in productivity, business, fitness, physician finances, and apparently hockey. Do you just take more shots on goal, or do you wait for the right one?

I’ve been thinking about this more than usual lately, largely because I’ve been watching more hockey than I ever have in my life. Which, if you know me or know Buffalo sports history over the last decade-plus, is unexpected. The Sabres have not exactly rewarded casual fandom. But this year? Different story. They’re good. They made the playoffs. They won a series. The city feels alive with hockey again, and I’ve found myself getting pulled in along with everyone else.

Samuel & Emery dappin' up Alex Tuch earlier this year…

And with that has come a completely unqualified but enthusiastic attempt to understand the game.

The Game That Got Me Thinking

Last week, I was watching a Game 7 between Tampa Bay and Montreal. Stakes were high. The winner would go on to play Buffalo. So naturally, I was locked in.

What stood out wasn’t just the result, which was Montreal winning, but how they won. They scored three goals on something like nine shots. Tampa? Two goals on around thirty shots.

Thirty.

Now, my very basic, outsider understanding of hockey has always been: just throw pucks at the net. Chaos happens. Goals feel random. They come off of deflections, screens, and weird bounces. It seems like volume should win out over time. More shots equal more chances for randomness to break your way.

So naturally, I assumed the data would back that up. More shots on goal should correlate strongly with winning.

But…not really.

There is a relationship. Teams that outshoot their opponents do win more often. But it’s not nearly as strong as you’d think. Depending on the season, teams that lead in shots on goal win somewhere in the 55 to 60% range. Which is meaningful, but far from deterministic. It’s not basketball, where more attempts from good spots reliably stack the odds. In hockey, shot quality based on things like location, traffic, and rebound opportunities matters a lot.

In fact, metrics like “expected goals,” which try to account for shot quality, tend to be more predictive of winning than raw shot totals. A team can pepper the goalie from the blue line all night and rack up shots, but if the other team is generating high danger chances in tight, the scoreboard might not reflect the shot count.

Which Brings Us Back to Life

Because this isn’t really about hockey.

I think this idea hits physicians in a unique way because our training pushes us hard in both directions.

On one hand, medicine rewards volume. We study more. We work more. We see more patients. We do more reps. During training, there is no real substitute for exposure and repetition. You need to see enough cases, write enough notes, scrub enough operations, and make enough clinical decisions to develop pattern recognition. In that setting, quantity really does matter.

But medicine also punishes low quality decisions. A careless plan, a missed diagnosis, or a poorly executed operation can have real consequences. So we also learn to be deliberate. We learn to slow down, gather information, and avoid preventable mistakes.

That combination is useful in medicine. But outside of medicine, it can get confusing.

In our financial lives, for example, we may think that working harder or doing more is always the answer. More hours. More shifts. More articles. More podcasts. More investment ideas. More accounts. More everything. But the goal is not just to be busy with our finances. The goal is to build financial wellbeing, freedom, and control.

And those are not always the same thing.

More Shots Are Still Better Than No Shots

At a high level, “more shots” is still better than no shots. If you’re doing nothing, then yes, do something. Send the email. Write the paragraph. Take the meeting. Put the puck on net.

That part matters.

I do not want the takeaway to be that we should all sit around waiting for the perfect opportunity. That can become its own trap. Sometimes the biggest problem is not that we are taking low quality shots. It is that we are not taking any shots at all.

This happens in physician finance all the time. We wait to make a student loan plan because we are not sure what the best plan is. We wait to invest because we are worried about picking the wrong allocation. We wait to buy disability insurance because the options seem confusing. We wait to create a written financial plan because life is busy and we assume we will get to it later.

But later has a way of becoming much later.

So yes, sometimes quantity matters. Sometimes you need reps. Sometimes you need momentum. Sometimes the first step is just taking action, even if that action is imperfect.

But once you’re past that baseline, the equation changes.

There’s a big difference between activity and intentionality.

When Activity Looks Like Progress

I see this mistake in physician finances all the time. And I say that because I made versions of it myself.

It is very easy to confuse financial activity with financial progress. We read about another investment strategy. We compare another loan refinance option. We listen to another podcast. We think about real estate, index funds, private deals, tax strategies, side gigs, and asset protection. And none of those things are bad. In fact, a lot of them can be very useful.

But only if they fit into an actual plan.

Otherwise, we are just taking shots from the outside and hoping something gets through.

The higher quality chances in physician finance are usually much more basic. Do you know your net worth? Do you know your savings rate? Do you have a written financial plan? Are you adequately insured? Are you investing consistently? Are you avoiding lifestyle creep? Are you using your income to buy freedom rather than just more stuff?

Those questions are not flashy. But they matter.

And in my experience, they matter a lot more than finding the perfect investment or the most sophisticated strategy.

If you’re just firing blindly, whether that’s sending low effort outreach, jumping between low level tasks, or making reactive decisions, you might generate volume, but not necessarily results. You’re taking thirty low quality shots on goal from the perimeter.

The Other Trap Is Waiting for Perfect

On the other hand, if you over optimize for quality, waiting for the perfect plan, the perfect timing, or the perfect conditions, you risk never taking the shot at all. Analysis paralysis is its own form of losing.

So the real game isn’t choosing quantity or quality. It’s understanding the interplay.

Sometimes you’re at the blue line with no clear lane. No perfect pass. No obvious play developing. In that moment? Take the shot. Create chaos. Something good might happen.

Other times, you look up and see a teammate wide open. A higher percentage opportunity if you just slow down, make the pass, and be intentional. That’s when quality should win.

The trick, and this is where it gets uncomfortable, is that you don’t always know which situation you’re in.

So You Need Both Gears

You need the ability to act quickly, imperfectly, and with volume when needed. And you need the discipline to recognize when patience and precision will lead to better outcomes.

Maybe that is the real lesson here. It is not that quantity is good and quality is bad. Or that quality is good and quantity is bad. It is that we need to get better at recognizing what the situation calls for.

Sometimes the right answer is more reps. If you are just getting started with your finances, you probably need to read more, listen more, ask more questions, and take more basic actions. You need to build your foundation. You need to get comfortable talking about money. You need to make the first budget, open the first investment account, calculate the first net worth statement, and write down the first version of your plan.

But as you grow, the quality of your decisions starts to matter more.

At some point, doing more is not the answer. Doing the right things is. That might mean saying no to a bad investment even if everyone else seems excited about it. It might mean not buying the bigger house even though the bank says you can afford it. It might mean choosing a lower paying job because it gives you more control over your time. Or it might mean investing in your own wellbeing instead of squeezing in one more shift.

Those are not always easy decisions. But they are the kinds of decisions that move us closer to the life we actually want.

The Takeaway

Hockey just made that clearer for me in a way I didn’t expect.

More shots are usually better than no shots. That is true in hockey, finance, business, and life. But more is not always better than better. At some point, we have to ask whether we are creating real opportunities or just staying busy.

Most physicians do not have an effort problem. We know how to work hard. We know how to grind. We know how to keep going when things are difficult. But effort alone does not guarantee the outcome we want. At some point, we have to ask whether our effort is pointed in the right direction.

Sometimes the right move is to put the puck on net.

Sometimes the right move is to make the extra pass.

And the hard part is learning the difference.

Also, for the record, if the Sabres keep winning, I may soon have stronger opinions on this topic. Which should concern everyone.

What do you think? What's more important, quantity or quality? What do you emphasize? Is it always that way? Can the Sabres take the Cup? Let me know in the comments below!