I was perusing the league scoring leaders, and I noticed that Anze Kopitar has 89 points this year. Quite the season for a 30 year old. That isn't the only thing that is anomalous about scoring this season. As of today there are 24 players (who have played at least 50 games) who are averaging a point per game. Here are the number of players in each year that have averaged a point per game since the 2010-2011 season:
2010-2011: 12
2011-2012: 7
2012-2013: 19 (Lockout Shortened year)
2013-2014: 10
2014-2015: 7
2015-2016: 5
2016-2017: 8
So the first question is, is this season an anomaly, or is this upswing in scoring going to continue?
If it's going to continue, what do you think the cause of it is? I'm sure it's a combination of factors. Here are a some things that I can think of:
1. Expansion weakened teams across the board. In years past expansion would add one weak team. This expansion added a fairly strong team that took fairly good pieces off of other teams, perhaps allowing a scoring chance or 2 per game across the board.
2. Pittsburgh winning the cup with three elite scorers has caused teams to try and replicate that model in an order to beat them. Their system forces teams to have offense in an effort to compete with them because you can't shut down all three players over a 7 game series, thus opening up the game.
3. Goalie equipment changes have flat out lead to more goals.
4. We are reaching a saturation point of scoring talent league wide. Drafting ideologies have changed, and players are focusing on skilled players rather than size, and that ideology has lead to an influx of talent. Combine that with the scoring talents of some of the older players that have stuck around and you have the spread out talent base that can put the puck in the net. This would be similar to what happened around the late 80's, early nineties where there was a lot of scoring league wide, and you saw players like Dave Andreychuk score back to back 50 goal seaons and players like Pat Lafontaine reach a pinnacle of 148 points.
One other thing that I though might have an impact is the emphasis on puck possession around the league has lead to more passing centric game plans as a teams try to maintain the puck, which has lead to more players getting assists. That might be a reach, but I thought it might be a factor in some way shape or form. I think a deep dive in to goal scoring rates versus assist rates would be required to see if there was something there.
Anyways, I hope it continues. I like more scoring and I think the games have been really interesting this year. I don't need players to put up 215 point seasons, but it would be nice to have 4 or 5 players break 100 points in a season. That probably won't happen this year, but even having 2, and a bunch of players in the 90 point ranch would be an improvement over previous years.
2010-2011: 12
2011-2012: 7
2012-2013: 19 (Lockout Shortened year)
2013-2014: 10
2014-2015: 7
2015-2016: 5
2016-2017: 8
So the first question is, is this season an anomaly, or is this upswing in scoring going to continue?
If it's going to continue, what do you think the cause of it is? I'm sure it's a combination of factors. Here are a some things that I can think of:
1. Expansion weakened teams across the board. In years past expansion would add one weak team. This expansion added a fairly strong team that took fairly good pieces off of other teams, perhaps allowing a scoring chance or 2 per game across the board.
2. Pittsburgh winning the cup with three elite scorers has caused teams to try and replicate that model in an order to beat them. Their system forces teams to have offense in an effort to compete with them because you can't shut down all three players over a 7 game series, thus opening up the game.
3. Goalie equipment changes have flat out lead to more goals.
4. We are reaching a saturation point of scoring talent league wide. Drafting ideologies have changed, and players are focusing on skilled players rather than size, and that ideology has lead to an influx of talent. Combine that with the scoring talents of some of the older players that have stuck around and you have the spread out talent base that can put the puck in the net. This would be similar to what happened around the late 80's, early nineties where there was a lot of scoring league wide, and you saw players like Dave Andreychuk score back to back 50 goal seaons and players like Pat Lafontaine reach a pinnacle of 148 points.
One other thing that I though might have an impact is the emphasis on puck possession around the league has lead to more passing centric game plans as a teams try to maintain the puck, which has lead to more players getting assists. That might be a reach, but I thought it might be a factor in some way shape or form. I think a deep dive in to goal scoring rates versus assist rates would be required to see if there was something there.
Anyways, I hope it continues. I like more scoring and I think the games have been really interesting this year. I don't need players to put up 215 point seasons, but it would be nice to have 4 or 5 players break 100 points in a season. That probably won't happen this year, but even having 2, and a bunch of players in the 90 point ranch would be an improvement over previous years.
