Quote:
Originally Posted by Vulcan
That's a bit of an exaggeration in my mind. It was also the era of expansion and the watering down of talent leads to increased scoring plus the introduction of the slapshot and the curved stick made goalies look bad.
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The slapshot and the curved stick were both introduced in the early 1960s.
As for expansion, it is true that expansion, up to a point, results in increased scoring. Beyond that point, scoring actually goes down because there are too many teams with no talent to speak of at either end of the ice. It's true, for instance, that in the early 1970s the Bruins and Habs set team scoring records. But they did it against expansion teams that often failed to crack 200 goals per year.
Anyway, none of this accounts for the fact that defencemen were counted on to carry a much greater part of the offensive workload in the 70s and 80s than they are today. A team like this year's Flames, with 4 defencemen in the top 10 of team scoring, would have been nothing unusual back then. Today, it's like they are playing a whole different game from their competition. (One reason why they are doing so much better than naive statistical analysis would predict.)