Goals, Goals, Goals: We Know NHL Scoring Is Up, But Here Are the Numbers Behind It

For the third season in a row, NHL goal-scoring is up compared to pre-pandemic levels. But what are the side effects, such as double-digit games, goaltending and more?

We’ve all heard the rhetoric time and time again. Goal-scoring is up across the NHL. 

Games have seen more goals, and players are scoring at a much higher rate than they have for years. One doesn’t have to look much further past the fact that Jamie Benn won the Art Ross Trophy with 87 points in 2014-15 and that Connor McDavid won last year's trophy with 153 points to understand the game has changed.

The conversation was brought back to the fore by the goal-scoring frenzy on Family Day in Canada or Presidents’ Day in the United States. On the holiday Monday, teams put up a combined 81 goals across 10 games. 

But these aren’t the only stats to back up the league’s goal-scoring rise. Here is a deep dive into some stats suggesting that NHL scoring is up like it hasn’t been in 40 years.

NHL teams are averaging 3.12 goals per game, per hockey-reference.com. While that’s actually down slightly from the previous two seasons – which saw an average of 3.18 and 3.14 goals per game, respectively – there’s still time to eclipse the previous two years’ totals. 

Even if this year's scoring line doesn’t increase, it’s still much higher than anything seen in a long time. Before the previous two seasons, the only instances in the past 30 years where the league's teams averaged more than 3.00 goals per game were in 2005-06, right after the lockout, and in 1995-96, which saw 3.14 goals per game. 

Going back further, NHL teams averaged at least three goals per game every season between 1970-71 and 1993-94. There was a definite drop in scoring throughout the late ’90s and early 2000s during the Dead Puck Era. Totals like the 3.18 average the NHL saw last season haven’t been seen consistently since the early ’90s. With the numbers remaining high for three seasons now, the increased scoring is not a fluke as seen in the past.

We can also break down the higher scoring game by game.

As of Feb. 20, there have been 63 games where teams have combined to score 10 or more goals. At the same time last season, there were 64, so we’re right around the same pace.

Last season ended with 96 games where teams combined for 10 or more goals. In 2021-22, there were even more, with 106 such games. The last time the NHL played an 82-game schedule was 2018-19, before the pandemic, when the league saw 86 of these games. There were 77 in 2017-18. So not only do teams score more on average, but it's resulting in more goal-a-paloozas in the past few years as well.

Not only is there a bump in combined 10-goal games, but there's an uptick in teams scoring at least 10 goals on their own as well.

Since 2022, there have been seven instances where a team has scored 10 or more goals, with the “more” being an 11-2 Pittsburgh Penguins win over the Detroit Red Wings on March 27, 2022.

Before 2022, there hadn’t been a game when a team scored 10 or more goals since December 2017, when the Montreal Canadiens beat the Detroit Red Wings 10-1. That year also saw another 10-goal performance earlier on when the Chicago Blackhawks beat the Penguins 10-1 in October 2017. That’s a five-year gap, be it with a couple of shortened seasons due to the pandemic.

There were also two 10-goal performances involving the Canadiens in 2016. However, the one instance before was in the 2012 playoffs between the Philadelphia Flyers and Penguins, indicating another large gap in time between double-digit games. As a result, the NHL is starting to see these double-digit performances at a more consistent rate.

These stats have obviously affected goalie numbers as well. 

Over the past three seasons, the NHL average for save percentage has been .907, .904 and .904, respectively. Before the pandemic, goalies carried a .913, .912 and a .910 save percentage between 2016-17 and 2018-19. That is a big drop-off from a league-average perspective. 

The consistency in these numbers from last year to this one also shows how this is not just a one-off fluke but the new reality for NHL scoring and goaltending.

If these numbers are any indication, players are finding different ways to score more often and more consistently. 

The NHL leader in goals this year, Auston Matthews, just eclipsed the 50-goal mark in his 54th game. In 2015-16, Alex Ovechkin led the league with 50 goals in 79 games. The style of play has changed a lot. The speed and the mentality when it comes to offense have adapted along with it. For instance, when was the last time you noticed two D-men on the same power-play unit for any team? It rarely happens anymore. This is the new reality in the NHL, and there's no turning back.