Scoring down this season?

[randywoodsghost]

Anyone have the data for average goals scored per game so far this season? It seems to me that there are less goals than we’ve seen in the past couple of seasons.

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[Koivu11]

NHL League Averages | Hockey-Reference.com

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[tmg]

Average team GAA stands at 2.84 right now, a little down from the last 3 seasons (2.91, 2.97, 2.92) but slightly higher than each of the four years before that, and substantially higher than the years before those four.

 

[byrath]

Anyone have the data for average goals scored per game so far this season? It seems to me that there are less goals than we’ve seen in the past couple of seasons.

League Averages

Goals are down a tiny bit. Most notable to me is the average shots per game, atm it's the lowest it's been since 2004.

 

[WhiskeyYerTheDevils]

It's a copy cat league. The last two cup winners were both heavier teams that played a more defensive system, whose best players were both rock solid two way centers. It's not too shocking that we're seeing that proliferate a bit.

Prior to that, we had 3 consecutive high octane offensive teams (each with an offensive superstar as their best player) win the cup, so it's similarly not unexpected that scoring would jump league wide in the following seasons as teams seek to emulate that approach.

 

[amnesiac]

its always gone up immediately after an expansion team comes into the league, and then plateaus a few seasons later (see VGK and SEA)

NHL League Averages | Hockey-Reference.com (Goals column)

 

[SnuggaRUDE]

Rules enforcement is becoming more optional. Since expansion median PPO/game is 3.87/game. From 2016-today each season is in the bottom 10 PPO/game.

They're calling 20% fewer PPO.

Lax rules enforcement helps defense since more infractions are based around puck retriveal.

 

[filinski77]

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Short answer - no, things are consistent at the team-wide level based on the last couple years.

If you want to dig into the results of the elite players in the league, I used the top 1/2/3/5/10/20/30th point and goal-scorers, and assumed 19gp so far this season (on avg) and extrapolated to 82 games.

Results are that the top players are on pace to absolutely outscore the results from last year. Obviously there will be slowdowns as it's harder to maintain these paces over 82 games vs. 1/4 of a season. But it definitely shows that scoring is NOT down this season.

	Points	gp based on 19gp	82gp pace	Last year actuals
1​	34​	1.79	147	144​
2​	33​	1.74	142	140​
3​	30​	1.58	129	132​
5​	28​	1.47	121	110​
10​	26​	1.37	112	98​
20​	22​	1.16	95	88​
30​	20​	1.05	86	77​
		-	-
	Goals
1​	15​	0.79	65	69​
2​	14​	0.74	60	57​
3​	14​	0.74	60	54​
5​	13​	0.68	56	49​
10​	12​	0.63	52	44​
20​	10​	0.53	43	37​
30​	9​	0.47	39	33​

 

[LevelingSolo]

NHL League Averages | Hockey-Reference.com

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Thought this would be interesting to revisit since the season is over the halfway marker

Currently at 2.99, first time its under 3.00 in over three seasons

What's interesting though is that Save % is the lowest it's been in years