Could Cale Makar Become One of the Best NHL D-men Ever? Image [https://thehockeynews.com/.image/c_fit,h_600,w_600/MTk0NDE4MDE5NTI5NjY0MTc3/usatsi_19403734.jpg] Just a few years ago, the scores from Monday night's six-game NHL slate would have looked pretty normal. * undefined * undefined * undefined * undefined * undefined * undefined In today's NHL, Monday was a night of sweet relief for goaltenders. Cam Talbot and Jordan Binnington each earned shutouts and nobody got blown out. Just 19 goals were scored, not counting the shootout tallies in Montreal. That's an average of 3.17 goals per game — less than half of what we've come to expect this year, where teams went into Monday night's games averaging 3.19 goals per game [https://www.hockey-reference.com/leagues/stats.html] each, or 6.38 combined. That's the highest output since the 1993-94 season (6.48 goals per game), when Wayne Gretzky picked up his 10th and final Art Ross Trophy with 130 points for the Los Angeles Kings. All told, eight players cracked the 100-point threshold that year and 42 delivered better than a point a game, although three big stars played limited games due to injury issues. Mario Lemieux suited up for just 22 games but tallied 37 points for a league-leading 1.68 points per game. Cam Neely famously had 50 goals and 74 points (1.51 PPG) in 49 games. And Pat LaFontaine followed up his career-best 148-point season in 1992-93, where he finished second in the scoring race behind Lemieux's 160 points, with 18 points in 16 games (1.13 PPG). This season's scoring explosion hearkens back to that wide-open era, but the scoring wealth is now being spread more widely than it was back in the day. A point per game doesn't even get a player onto the first page [https://www.nhl.com/stats/skaters?reportType=season&seasonFrom=20222023&seasonTo=20222023&gameType=2&filter=gamesPlayed,gte,1&sort=pointsPerGame&page=0&pageSize=50] of the NHL's scoring stats this season. Through Monday, 48 players have better than a point-per-game pace, and out of that group, only three have played less than 20 games. They're all respected producers: Nikolaj Ehlers of Winnipeg (three points in two games), Valeri Nichushkin of Colorado (13 points in nine games) and Brad Marchand of Boston (21 points in 19 games). Maybe this is a salary cap and parity thing, but this season's top scorers are also well-distributed across the league. Through Monday's games, only nine of the NHL's 32 clubs don't have a player producing at more than a point-per-game average. And six of those nine 'have-not' teams do have a player in the top 63, at exactly a point a game. In order of their position in the standings: Seattle (Andre Burakovsky), Detroit (Dylan Larkin and Jakub Vrana, who has only 2 games played), Washington (Alex Ovechkin), St. Louis (Pavel Buchnevich), Arizona (Clayton Keller) and Chicago (Tyler Johnson, but with only 6 GP). Only Calgary, Nashville and Anaheim do not have at least one player who hits the threshold. With that in mind, it's incredible to recall that in the 2014-15 NHL season, just eight years ago, Jamie Benn of the Dallas Stars won the Art Ross Trophy as the NHL's leading scorer with 87 points. Even when players who didn't play a full 82 games are included, only seven skaters managed more than a point a game that year: 1. undefined 2. undefined 3. undefined 4. undefined 5. undefined 6. undefined 7. undefined Connor McDavid really did come along at the right time. Drafted first overall in 2015, McDavid has won four Art Ross Trophies in his seven full seasons, with 100 points in 2016-17, 108 in 2017-18, 105 in 2020-21 (in the 56-game season!) and 123 in 2021-22. He was limited to one assist in the Oilers' 2-1 loss in Minnesota on Monday night and saw his seven-game goal streak snapped, but he still leads the scoring race in goals (25), assists (30) and, it stands to reason, in points (55). Now with 752 career points in 516 games, McDavid's 1.457 points-per-game average is fourth-best in NHL history [https://www.nhl.com/stats/skaters?reportType=allTime&seasonFrom=19171918&seasonTo=20222023&gameType=2&filter=points,gte,500&sort=pointsPerGame&page=0&pageSize=50] among players with at least 500 points. He's behind only Wayne Gretzky (1.92), Mario Lemieux (1.88) and Mike Bossy (1.50). He has been scoring's rising tide and has helped float other boats over the last eight years, but he's certainly not alone. McDavid turns 26 in January. Of the other 47 players who are also averaging more than a point a game, 22 are younger than he is — and the youngest of that group is 21-year-old Jack Hughes, with 34 points in 28 games. Only eight are in their 30s: Sidney Crosby, Erik Karlsson, Steven Stamkos, Jeff Skinner, Artemi Panarin, Brad Marchand, Mats Zuccarello and Zach Hyman. That leaves 17 in the 26-to-29 range. As one other point of reference, let's compare to pre-pandemic levels. During the last full season in 2018-19, Nikita Kucherov exploded to capture the Art Ross Trophy with 128 points, the highest total since Mario Lemieux's 161-point year in 1995-96. But with a league-leading 3.89 goals per game, the dominant Lightning were offensive outliers that season — until their shocking first-round sweep at the hands of the Columbus Blue Jackets. That year, the NHL scoring average was continuing a trend of upticks and cracked three goals a game per team for the first time since the post-lockout 2005-06 season. But only six players hit triple digits in points by the end of 2018-19, and only 32 tallied better than a point per game. Now, we're getting more goals from more players on more teams. More often than not, that adds up to a fun viewing experience for hockey fans. And if you're worried the good times won't last as coaches get their systems better installed and penalty killing kicks up, Monday night's low-scoring results appear to be an outlier — so far, anyway. Splitting the season so far into two halves — from the first regular-season games in Prague on Oct. 7 through Nov. 9, 47 players averaged better than a point a game. From Nov. 10 to Dec. 12, that number grew to 53 — a hint that even more scorers are heating up and looking to join the party. It's bad news for goalies, but great news for our entertainment.
