[Sylvanfan]

Back when Cowperson used to post here, he often opined about two constants that had an impact on the number of goals. Average age of players in the league at that time, and number of teams who made the playoffs.

In a younger league, the number of goals per game tended to be higher, as less experienced players didn't defend as well as more experienced ones did. Younger players are faster, and a bit riskier.

As the NHL expanded from 1991 on the number of playoff teams has stayed constant at 16. The 91 to 94 expansion from 21 to 24 teams where San Jose, Florida and Ottawa were added did result in a bit of an explosion in goals initially. But at that time there was a largely untapped talent pool of Eastern European players who suddenly were much easier for NHL teams to get over into the league. Even other places like Sweden and Finland started having more players come over, and be able to come over younger. So at that time the talent pool was able to support additional teams.

But after that pool was tapped into and the late 90's expansion happened there no longer was the untapped pool of talent. So coaching became a bigger factor as teams employed more defensive systems to help them not lose more games. Also factor in demographics as the league got older. By the late 2000's the league was still largely comprised of Baby boomers who's careers had been prolonged by having the league go from 26 teams to 30 teams at the end of the 90's.

The 2004-05 lockout essentially ended the career of a lot of the Baby Boomers. But again, this couples with the fact that the last chunk of the Baby Boomers form 1960 to 66 more or less had aged out, and the 1980 and on echo generation was beginning to emerge. So the rule change coupled with a shift to a younger league contributed to scoring increases. But the league stayed the same age, and coaching again took hold, and it started to become hard to score again.

The recent rules do seem to have resulted in a few more goals, but I tend to think that it's going to trend down a bit again as goaltenders re-adjust their playing styles, and teams will also alter their defensive strategies.

I'd be interested to see how Save Percentages worked in relation to goals scored. I'd also be interested to break the NHL season down into chunks and see what that looks like. My old world eye test tells me that as the season wears on, scoring tends to decrease, particularly post all star break...but is that just a Flames bias that I have?

At this point a scoring decrease for an average of 12 games per team isn't going to drag the numbers down two much, maybe .02 goals a game. But it did seem like at mid season there was a lot of players scoring at a 120 point pace. Today, those guys might end up with 105 sort of thing.

As for the Flames, I think 300 isn't going to happen. Ideally 6 goals a game or where we currently are at is a good number. You still see the odd high scoring game, but you also get those tightly contested 2-1 games too.