Not sure what it really means but they mentioned last night how Montreal and Dallas lead the league in number of 1 goal games and so I took a look at how that's been trending the last couple of years.
Games decided by 1 goal
21-22: 27 games, 8 wins, 8 losses, 11 OTL
22-23: 31 games, 17 wins, 8 losses, 6 OTL
23-24: 36 games, 16 wins, 10 losses, 10 OTL
Games decided by 2 goals
21-22: 12 games, 3 wins, 9 losses
22-23: 16 games, 4 wins, 12 losses
23-24: 7 games, 5 wins, 2 losses
Games decided by 3+ goals
21-22: 43 games, 11 wins, 32 losses
22-23: 35 games, 10 wins, 25 losses
23-24: 19 games, 3 wins, 16 losses
So we've been steadily increasing the number of 1 goal games which sounds like a good sign during a rebuild. We've had a surprisingly good record in those 1 goal games throughout our entire rebuild. Notably in 21-22 we were 1-5-7 with Ducharme and 7-3-4 with MSL so this seems very much a case of MSL motivating our guys to always fight.
In terms of 2 goal games we've seemingly turned it around this season but for 3+ goal games it's a bit mixed. On the one hand we've been cutting our losses down which is obviously a good sign, but on the other hand this season we've seemed to have lost the ability to win games by 3+ goals.
From the subjective eye test I do notice that we are quite often blowing leads and letting our opponents back into games we shouldn't. This leads to both to less 3 goal wins, but also more 1 goal games in general, and our terrible play when opponent's pull their goalie is probably a big contributor.
