I heavily believe it is the unstructured attack of the Flames that has them posting a higher goals/shots %.
The Flames system allows for a d-man to jump in to the play at any time. You see them sneaking in from the line an awful lot. They also lead rushes and go into the corners in the attacking end (sort of a "nuclear pinch"). I've even seen them check the points during play occasionally.
Late-modern NHL players (read last 9 years, since the 2005 lockout) are pretty much gods when it comes to defence based on positional play. Almost all of them can do it very well. Where they get into trouble is when the other team abandons what everyone else has been doing to date and embraces a highly unstructured offence and attack. Since few teams have been crazy enough to try this in the late-modern league, it can throw the defending team for a loop. The Flames are often doing so. It's certainly high-risk, high-reward and the Flames have given up more than a few odd-man chances because of the attack they favour.
So when I see comments above asking whether Hartley truly has tapped into something, I think that he probably has. At least until someone figures out how to effectively defend against it, or the rules change to make it harder.
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