What explains the number of offensive milestones this season?

[WatchfulElm]

2 words : Connor Bedard

An unprecedent amount of teams have been tanking since Day 1. Some of them didn't even bother trying to get decent goalies. So a lot more blowouts than usual.

 

[TheRumble]

1. Marc Andre Fleury has said this in interviews but today's modern hockey player is much better than the prior generation. He didn't specify which shot but he mentioned that there are shots today that the average NHL player will score on 7/10 times if it's unblocked whereas in years past, it might be only 3/10 times. And if it's an elite shooter like Matthews than forget it. You're just praying he hits the post.
2. This is my own theory but the current generation of hockey players in the league grew up without any knowledge of the pre-lockout hockey so they've had an entire lifetime dedicated to learning from the modern game. Take someone like Steven Stamkos who was drafted in 2008. Stamkos didn't play in the NHL pre-lockout but the OHL and GTHL where he came up in, only adopted the NHL rules in 2006 so from the time he started playing hockey to 2005-06 when he hit the OHL, he only knew of pre-lockout hockey and had to work those biases out of his system. Same goes for Crosby, Tavares and other North American draft picks from the same time frame. Someone like McDavid probably didn't even WATCH pre-2005 hockey, much less play it so he has an extra 10+ years of modern hockey he could take in over someone like Stamkos. It also benefited the Europeans too, it used to be that Europeans had to adjust to the smaller ice surface and the two line pass NHL, nowadays they don't and the adjustment period isn't as long. We are just getting our first batch of coaches of the same pedigree too. Someone like Claude Julien played an entire career pre-lockout and spent the early part of his coaching career pre-lockout, his mind is more in tune with that style of play than the current one but someone like Martin St. Louis mostly played his career with post-2005 hockey rules and is now coaching.
3. Hockey is a tactically more rigorous game now. The 1-3-1 powerplay formation has been known in hockey for many years but it really only began being properly used in the last few, specifically the so called bumper position. The first team I noticed - and I'm not saying they invented it - just that I noticed it, using that position different were the Bruins under Cassidy. Another recent innovation is the increasingly popularity 3-2 offensive zone setup. When Sheldon Keefe took over the Leafs, he used a formation I didn't see a lot of in the NHL where he had 3 men on the blue line and 2 men down low. The typical formation used in hockey was known as the dice formation because the players would be arranged the same way as the 5 side on the die - two guys at the blue line, one guy at the slot and the wingers down low. With Keefe, he pulled the middle guy up to create a 3 man blue line. It allowed for more pinching opportunities and passing lanes to be created while safeguarding against odd man rushes in case of turnovers. The formation has since been adopted by other teams in the league. I've noticed the Oilers using it this year and also the Avalanche won the Cup with it last year.

 

[solidmotion]

- expansion. the big jumps in league scoring were in 2017-18 and 2021-22, the years vegas and seattle entered the league. talent dilution. disparity between top and bottom teams.

- a surge in offensive talent and a pivot in coaching strategy to maximize it.

- lull in goaltending talent and technique. equipment changes maybe to blame.

- lull in defensive talent as well. there's no chara, pronger, lidstrom, bourque in the league today.

- advances in power play strategy. power play opportunities are no higher than they were in the mid 2010s but teams are converting at rates not seen since the 80s. (edmonton with possibly the best power play of all time.)

- teams might be less willing to take penalties given the above and play more passively, hurting their defensive chances and raising even-strength scoring.

 

[CashMash]

Goalie equipment did way, way more than I thought it would. I think I was wrong about that based on prior reductions not having done much. There are a handful of consistently elite goalies nowadays.

The expansion teams themselves have done well, but they also took assets from other teams, meaning the pool of available players is slightly diluted. Add to that less obstruction being allowed in general.

Still, scoring is up way more than seems reasonable to me based on just these things, so maybe there are many small things working in tandem to cause such a result.

 

[violaswallet]

While I don't have the total numbers, I would certainly say that it has gone up.
View attachment 685405

EDIT: Did the total numbers. Coming into today's play, there had been 419 EN goals scored, so far, this year (34 games remaining) for a rate of .33 ENG per game. Last year there were 474 for a rate of 0.36 ENG per game. 2020-2021 had 262 for a rate of .30 ENG/g, 2019-2020 had 332 for a rate of 0.31 ENG/g, 2018-2019 had 408 for a rate of .32 ENG/g.

EDIT 2: Doing some very rough math, it appears that somewhere around 24% of the scoring increase that we have witnessed since 2014-2015 can be attributed to empty net goals. (sampling the 8 years since, and prior to, the large jump in ENG)

Is there data on minutes playing with an empty net. My sense is that the goalie is being pulled earlier as Cliff Asness suggested

 

[J bo Jeans]

Players are just better now a days. Just ask Ryan Whitney, he says that this isn't the same league he played in and that was only 10 years ago. Players are faster, more skilled and overall take nutrition more seriously.

 

[violaswallet]

Is there data on minutes playing with an empty net. My sense is that the goalie is being pulled earlier as Cliff Asness suggested

So I found the data and it is kind of cool: minutes per 60 is up 50% since 2008, while goals per 60 is up 30%. Combined, this explains the about the 95% increase in empty net goals (~200 goals). This would explain about 20% of the roughly 1,000 goal increase since 2008. (normalized to thirty teams)

An additional 50 goals (5% of total increase) were scored while attacking on the empty net. Not a super sophisticated analysis (need to adjust for minutes turned into EN)

In the time-series, we see that efficiency has been trending upwards

while minutes played exploded in 2016.

 

[Zob]

Tongue planted in cheek.... the p92 or variations thereof. Shots effortlessly coming off an open toe blade

 

[Guttersniped]

The league has been trying to increase scoring for a while.

Here are the big ones.

- They require smaller goalie equipment(primarily pad sizes)

- Slashes and cross checks that weren't called before are automatic penalties now leading to more power players or players not making those defensive plays leading to players having more room to create something.

Those are the things the NHL has done from a rules standpoint.

Hockey player development has changed drastically. Players have several different coaches now growing up allowing them to acquire more skills. (dekes, skating, accuracy)

Diet, and training is more advanced allowing athletes to be the best versions of themselves.

There’s a slight uptick in PP opportunities but there was a big drop starting in 2013-14 and there’s still fewer than there used to be.

It’s just that the PK% is worse and PP% is better, along with the small uptick, so more PP goals.

The less power play time is likely what led teams to go to 4F-1D on their PP. You don’t get that much power play time, you don’t have time to f*** around with two units. You need a killer PP1 unit that delivers.

The response to that is Power Kill on the PK with much more offensively talented PKers. If teams are going to only put 1D out there then putting a unit that’s a scoring threat is way to actually produce goals. There’s been a lot of short handed goals, it’s not a fluke when you score 14-17 of them.

Expansion contributes. If you look when teams with massive seasons happen, recent expansion is usually there.

And COVID hit player development hard but particularly goalies. They need playing time to develop and shortened seasons weird seasons really hurt them.

Playing odds schedules probably didn’t help goalies stay healthy and it’s a position that’s very injury heavy. Hip surgery for butterfly goalies is turning into the equivalent of Tommy John surgery for MLB players, a large % are getting it sooner than later.

You add two new teams and goalie development/supply took a hit, that helps scoring.

 

[McShogun99]

Teams tend to follow trends of the latest Cup winners. Tampa, Colorado and Pittsburgh were all high octane teams that could beat you with offence and some toughness. Now teams are trying to emulate that style.

 

[Tom Polakis]

Save% has been declining steadily for several years now. It has dropped from .915 to .904 since 2016. That's a good starting point for the conversation. It's not just about offenses generating more opportunities, it's about goalies stopping a significantly smaller proportion of the pucks that come at them.

I was going to quote those same numbers, and add that power-play percentage has increased from 18.66% to 21.30% during that period.

I doubt that goaltending is getting worse. It probably has more to do with the style plateauing, while shooters continue to get more skilled.

There are a lot of other, good explanations in this thread.

 

[Martin Skoula]

1. Marc Andre Fleury has said this in interviews but today's modern hockey player is much better than the prior generation. He didn't specify which shot but he mentioned that there are shots today that the average NHL player will score on 7/10 times if it's unblocked whereas in years past, it might be only 3/10 times. And if it's an elite shooter like Matthews than forget it. You're just praying he hits the post.
2. This is my own theory but the current generation of hockey players in the league grew up without any knowledge of the pre-lockout hockey so they've had an entire lifetime dedicated to learning from the modern game. Take someone like Steven Stamkos who was drafted in 2008. Stamkos didn't play in the NHL pre-lockout but the OHL and GTHL where he came up in, only adopted the NHL rules in 2006 so from the time he started playing hockey to 2005-06 when he hit the OHL, he only knew of pre-lockout hockey and had to work those biases out of his system. Same goes for Crosby, Tavares and other North American draft picks from the same time frame. Someone like McDavid probably didn't even WATCH pre-2005 hockey, much less play it so he has an extra 10+ years of modern hockey he could take in over someone like Stamkos. It also benefited the Europeans too, it used to be that Europeans had to adjust to the smaller ice surface and the two line pass NHL, nowadays they don't and the adjustment period isn't as long. We are just getting our first batch of coaches of the same pedigree too. Someone like Claude Julien played an entire career pre-lockout and spent the early part of his coaching career pre-lockout, his mind is more in tune with that style of play than the current one but someone like Martin St. Louis mostly played his career with post-2005 hockey rules and is now coaching.
3. Hockey is a tactically more rigorous game now. The 1-3-1 powerplay formation has been known in hockey for many years but it really only began being properly used in the last few, specifically the so called bumper position. The first team I noticed - and I'm not saying they invented it - just that I noticed it, using that position different were the Bruins under Cassidy. Another recent innovation is the increasingly popularity 3-2 offensive zone setup. When Sheldon Keefe took over the Leafs, he used a formation I didn't see a lot of in the NHL where he had 3 men on the blue line and 2 men down low. The typical formation used in hockey was known as the dice formation because the players would be arranged the same way as the 5 side on the die - two guys at the blue line, one guy at the slot and the wingers down low. With Keefe, he pulled the middle guy up to create a 3 man blue line. It allowed for more pinching opportunities and passing lanes to be created while safeguarding against odd man rushes in case of turnovers. The formation has since been adopted by other teams in the league. I've noticed the Oilers using it this year and also the Avalanche won the Cup with it last year.

It’s a bit of a chicken or the egg situation with the 3-2, did guys like Makar flourish because it started being used or did coaches start using it because guys like Makar gave them a reason to? Karlsson is arguably more responsible than Keefe for the change.

 

[Jeffrey Pedler]

Maybe goalie equipment has something to do with it? Not sure why league scoring is so high these days is it really because of the lack of physicality/high pen calls and opening up the ice?

The 80s had plenty of physicality and the goalie equipment was smaller. So, that doesn't explain the high scoring game of today.

 

[Leafidelity]

Tanking

Two expansion teams

Maybe the weakest era of goalie talent since the 80s

 

[onetweasy]

I think goaltending is not what it used to be, many goaltending greats have recently retired Brodeur, Longo etc.

And to stand up for the goalies of this generation......shooting the puck has never been easier.

 

[Coffey]

is it really because of the lack of physicality/high pen calls and opening up the ice?

I sense it's a lot of this.

 

[Cotton]

1. Marc Andre Fleury has said this in interviews but today's modern hockey player is much better than the prior generation. He didn't specify which shot but he mentioned that there are shots today that the average NHL player will score on 7/10 times if it's unblocked whereas in years past, it might be only 3/10 times. And if it's an elite shooter like Matthews than forget it. You're just praying he hits the post.
2. This is my own theory but the current generation of hockey players in the league grew up without any knowledge of the pre-lockout hockey so they've had an entire lifetime dedicated to learning from the modern game. Take someone like Steven Stamkos who was drafted in 2008. Stamkos didn't play in the NHL pre-lockout but the OHL and GTHL where he came up in, only adopted the NHL rules in 2006 so from the time he started playing hockey to 2005-06 when he hit the OHL, he only knew of pre-lockout hockey and had to work those biases out of his system. Same goes for Crosby, Tavares and other North American draft picks from the same time frame. Someone like McDavid probably didn't even WATCH pre-2005 hockey, much less play it so he has an extra 10+ years of modern hockey he could take in over someone like Stamkos. It also benefited the Europeans too, it used to be that Europeans had to adjust to the smaller ice surface and the two line pass NHL, nowadays they don't and the adjustment period isn't as long. We are just getting our first batch of coaches of the same pedigree too. Someone like Claude Julien played an entire career pre-lockout and spent the early part of his coaching career pre-lockout, his mind is more in tune with that style of play than the current one but someone like Martin St. Louis mostly played his career with post-2005 hockey rules and is now coaching.
3. Hockey is a tactically more rigorous game now. The 1-3-1 powerplay formation has been known in hockey for many years but it really only began being properly used in the last few, specifically the so called bumper position. The first team I noticed - and I'm not saying they invented it - just that I noticed it, using that position different were the Bruins under Cassidy. Another recent innovation is the increasingly popularity 3-2 offensive zone setup. When Sheldon Keefe took over the Leafs, he used a formation I didn't see a lot of in the NHL where he had 3 men on the blue line and 2 men down low. The typical formation used in hockey was known as the dice formation because the players would be arranged the same way as the 5 side on the die - two guys at the blue line, one guy at the slot and the wingers down low. With Keefe, he pulled the middle guy up to create a 3 man blue line. It allowed for more pinching opportunities and passing lanes to be created while safeguarding against odd man rushes in case of turnovers. The formation has since been adopted by other teams in the league. I've noticed the Oilers using it this year and also the Avalanche won the Cup with it last year.

What I took from what Fleury said was that players today are much more reliant on their state-of-the-art sticks, and less on raw talent than those of the past.

The only thing I can say is that this sudden uptick in scoring happened a few years ago too, half the league hit career highs, then it happened this year again with the only noticeable difference being that goaltenders have been struggling all over.

 

[Connor McConnor]

1) The talent level in the NHL currently is ridiculous. That is the biggest factor IMO.

2) Goaltending is significantly worse, with only a handful of true perennial Vezina candidates.

3) Teams continue to adapt to the modern game with analytics.

Scoring is up in pretty much every single major NA sport (except Baseball where pitching has dominated lately). That can't be a "fluke". Offense sells more than defense in almost all cases from a viewership standpoint. As an above poster mentioned, perhaps all those little tweaks the NHL have made over the past few years has also helped.

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

2 main things stand out for me:

- Expansion teams are watering down the overall talent
- goalie equipment shrinking

other factors:
- focus on skill and speed
- coaching for more offense instead of defense

 

[Hanswurst]

Seems like 1995-1996 was a pretty nice Season. Hopefully history repeats.

Greetings an Avs Fan.

 

[snag]

It was what the league wanted. It was what we wanted. Why ask why?

 

[Montreal Shadow]

Another 3 point night for Robertson. He is at 106 points now and the way this guy is racking up points I can see him hitting 110.

He's at 108 now. Only needs 2 points in the next 4 periods. It's a real possibility.

 

[onetweasy]

Not nearly enough of this conversation has been about the changes to the hockey stick and the fact that it has allowed so many more players to have incredibly quick releases with pinpoint accuracy.

15-20 years ago there were maybe a 5-10 “snipers” in the league that were known for having a lethal shot.

Now 3rd liners are picking top corners from behind the goal line….

 

[braunm]

1. Stick technology-now 3rd & 4th liners can shoot the puck with ease of accuracy and speed (this pertains to all levels of hockey - less talent is required to produce a quick and accurate release. It used to require significant athleticism with older technologies)
2. Expansion - dilution of the talent pool
3. Smaller goalie equipment
4. Defencemen joining the attack, with change in offensive zone tactics