I have always viewed this in the larger philosophical respect. I feel like as scoring in the NHL dried up in the 90's, teams started playing entirely different. In the goal happy 80's, you played to win. You played to score as many as you could and if that meant giving up a few along the way, so be it. But then as scoring declined and systems came into play, you played not to lose. You played for the tie. You played for the OT point. You didn't worry about scoring as much as you did limiting mistakes.
I could very well be making a mountain out of a molehill, but I see it as the fundamental shift in hockey in the last 20 years. So from that perspective, I do think your point would hold on the micro level.
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