First, obstruction, even if it crept back a little, is nowhere near what it was prior to the lockout. I don’t want to go searching for it, but there’s a clip from game 1 of the 2000 SCF Final where Brodeur makes a really nice save on I believe Hull. If you look at Hull going through the neutral zone, I think it’s Claude Lemeuix who is literally grabbing his arm. Clemente or Thorne don’t even mention it during the replay that’s how accepted it was to do that. There has been nothing like that since the 2004-05 lock out ended.
Also, since the lockout they’ve done virtually everything they can to open up scoring, from getting rid of the redline, the institution of the trapezoid, to making the neutral zone smaller, creating more penalties like puck over the glass, and pretty much doing away with open ice hits. If you had these rules in the 80s, Gretzky and Mario probably would have scored 120 goals in a season at some point. Yet we still get only three one hundred point scorers in a season if there’s even one.
Not just that you have 31 teams now and pretty much the guy who can do nothing but fight is pretty much extinct. In other words there are more goalies than there ever were and more skilled players then there ever were, yet we’re still seeing very high save percentages almost across the board.
I’m sure equipment has something to do with it, but the goalies themselves are just superior atheletes than they used to be.