The NHL’s scoring surge continues unabated

The National Hockey League has been increasingly vocal over the past two decades about increasing offence. And the league, to its credit, has frequently put its thumb on the proverbial scale – tweaks like downsizing goaltending equipment and modifying officiating standards were always meant to stimulate offensive play. But the expected scoring surge was slow to materialize.

That was true up until about five years ago. Since that point in time, we have seen a steady rise in scoring across all game states. There’s a fascinating debate, one that can’t be solved today, over how to apportion the credit for what’s driving the increase. How much do you weigh things like rule changes versus longer-term initiatives, like the expansion of international recruiting pipelines to enhanced player development programs?

At any rate, scoring has been up for some time now, and it’s created a more compelling and entertaining product. In years past, high-scoring Octobers gave way as the season wore on, finishing with healthy servings of three-goal games in March. Now, scoring is more entrenched over the full year.

I wanted to see what the opening week of this NHL season looked like, having been fascinated by the uptick in scoring in recent years. Low and behold, it’s up again, with the league seeing 6.4 goals per game to open the year:

We are talking about 3 per cent of the season, so we are still working with very small samples right now, but 12 teams – headlined by the New York Islanders (4.9), Boston Bruins (4.6), and Pittsburgh Penguins (4.5) – are scoring at least three goals per game.

What’s also notable, and why I continue to be bullish on this trend sustaining itself, is the underlying numbers are also up. Yes, teams are scoring more goals, but scoring more goals can simply be a byproduct of hotter-than-expected shooting percentages or cooler-than-expected save percentages. Those percentage-based shifts rarely sustain themselves and aggressively regress towards the mean over long periods of time.

But what if offences are just inherently more dangerous? That’s the case, and it’s why the change in scoring continues to be supported. Consider the four plots below, which show offensive shooting volume by game state (even strength and power play), and offensive shooting volume adjusted for shot quality (expected goals). The below shows the same 15-year time period:

This is an important relationship. Underpinning the league’s increase in scoring is an observable change on two fronts: teams are more effective than ever at funneling shots towards opposing goaltenders, but those shots are also materially better in quality. It’s putting unrelenting pressure on defences and, correspondingly, will keep scoring at sustainably higher levels.

Just to show how far we have come, compare the opening frames of the 2022-23 regular season to 10 seasons ago. If you compare just the shift in scoring, it is up 20 per cent. But look at what’s happening beneath the surface:

I wrote last season that offence is becoming the great differentiator. As scoring increases, so too do margins and volatility, and the lineups that can routinely threaten their opponents are going to be well-positioned to win games; similarly, teams that have trouble scoring are going to fight increasing uphill battles as the value of a single goal has diminished.

Being a great defensive team is still critically important. But it’s never been more important to ice a lineup that can score and score often. That’s going to be one of the main storylines again this year, as weak offensive teams will lose their footing in the standings quicker than usual.