Pierre LeBrun of the Canadian Press has a piece on the wire today that looks at the NHL's dip in scoring this season, a drop from 6.1 goals per game last season to 5.8 so far this year. It's a figure that's up from the 5.1 scored in 2003-04, but a dip is a dip:
"But there's been a dip this season. Why is up for argument. Some believe coaches got smarter and more teams have figured out how to trap this season despite the crackdown on obstruction.
"Others believe there's more parity than ever, which lends itself to tighter-checking games."
What LeBrun doesn't get into is a breakdown of how scoring has changed from last season to this one, something that shows unequivocally that the reason for the drop in scoring is fewer goals scored on special teams. While the number of power-play and shorthanded goals is on pace to fall significantly short of last season's totals, even-strength scoring is actually on pace to marginally surpass the 2005-06 totals:
2005-06 scoring breakdown(figures are averages per team)
2006-07 projected scoring breakdown
On average, teams are on pace to score 4.0 more even-strength goals in total than last season, but 13.7 fewer power-play goals and 1.1 fewer shorthanded goals.
Overall, that equals out to a 10.1 goal decrease per team, or a little more than a 4-per-cent drop in scoring. Even-strength scoring is on pace to rise by 2.7-per-cent while power-play goal production is down a whopping 16.3 per cent.
Here's LeBrun again:
"Another theory is that players have adjusted to the new rules. They're certainly taking less penalties. Through Monday night the NHL was averaging 9.8 power plays per game, down from 11.8 through the same number of games last season."
Fewer penalties called, fewer power-play goals. We've found our culprit.
