NHL’s offensive explosion happy side effect of rules crackdown
Goals per game are up to nearly six, with 13 of the league’s 31 teams averaging three or more a night. And though those totals are somewhat inflated by the NHL’s dodgy practice of including shootout winners in the goals-for column, Sixth Avenue has been doing that since the 2005-06 introduction of the skills competition. Hence, comparisons hold.
This will be the NHL’s highest-scoring season since 2005-06, when 16 clubs averaged at least three goals per while combining for 6.17 a game in the first year under the Shanahan Summit reset coming out of Owners’ Lockout II — The Canceled Season.
In the interim, goals-per dipped to 5.42 only two years ago when just two teams could get to three a night. In 2014-15, 2013-14 and 2011-12, only three teams hit that magic number, which in truth is the bare minimum necessary to stoke even a modicum of excitement. Last year, seven teams scored at least three per.
Coaching is too good — or perhaps too obsessive, take your pick — and goaltending is too good for the league to ever go back to the offensive explosion of the late ’70s to early ’90s when games generally featured 7-8 goals a night. Everyone understands that. But this does appear to be trending in the right direction.
The steady influx into the league of remarkably talented and equally confident teenagers who don’t necessarily conform to previously established norms represents a major factor in the offensive uptick. The 2016 World Cup may not have a prominent place in history, but Team North America’s influence most surely endures.
It isn’t only scoring that’s up, but both scoring chances and golden scoring chances, at least from an anecdotal basis. Of course, keep in mind that I am surrounded by defense-optional operations in Manhattan and Brooklyn, so my sense might be warped, but probably not entirely. There are more chances, and more good chances, around the league.
And I’d give a good amount of credit for that to the NHL’s crackdown on slashing that officials have maintained from the start through the finish. The inability of beaten defenders to hack away at attackers’ hands or chop at them once a half-step behind has opened up the ice from the wide hash-marks in. Enforcement of the rule has created more one-on-one situations with which goalies have to contend.
This has been a welcome exception from the league, which has generally abandoned previous, assorted crackdowns by mid-season. Now the trick will be for the refs to enforce the rule just as consistently in and though the playoffs as they have during the season.
Enforcement of the rules. What a concept.
Of the 121 team seasons over the past four years, the Devils’ offensive output of 2015-16 (2.22 goal per game), 2016-17 (2.20) and 2014-15 (2.15) ranked 115th, 116th and 118th overall.
This year, entering Saturday’s match against the woebegone Islanders, New Jersey ranks 15th at 2.95 per. And Taylor Hall (86 points) had recorded 72 percent more points than team runner-up Nico Hischier’s 50.
That, by the way, represents the greatest such difference in the NHL, exceeding Connor McDavid’s 51-percent edge in Edmonton over Leon Draisaitl (103 points to 68).
You can take that to the heart.
So how many teams that might not otherwise fire its coach would do so if the Blackhawks dismiss Joel Quenneville?
Is there any more of a metronome than Derek Stepan, who, good, bad or indifferent — never indifferent — is on his way to a fifth straight season of posting between 53 and 57 points? Entering Saturday with 53 (with a career-low 13 goals but a matching career-high 40 assists) with four games to go, the former Ranger — pretty much everyone in the league is a former Ranger by now — could establish a personal best.
Yes, the Blueshirts missed him. Yes, everyone knew that they would. No, I never understood why the market was next to non-existent for him.
I have long believed and often written that suspensions should be augmented by additional games to be served against the particular offended team. For instance, if Brad Marchand (to pick a villain out of thin air) were suspended five games for concussing Marcus Johansson, he should also be ruled out of his team’s next five games against the Devils. If traded, the punishment would travel.
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Much to my surprise, there is precedent for team-specific suspensions, set in 1953-54 by NHL president Clarence Campbell. I learned this while reading Volume 3 of Charles M. Coleman’s treasured trilogy, “The Trail of the Stanley Cup.”
This from Page 219:
“In a game that was exceptional for violence, Rangers beat Canadiens 3-1 in New York on Dec. 20. Punches and butt-ends were freely exchanged until the climax came at 15:20 of the second period when the Rangers were leading 2-0. [Bob] Chrystal and [Bernie] Geoffrion started a scuffle along the boards and others rushed in to participate. Finally, Geoffrion confronted Ron Murphy, and after an exchange of words, Geoffrion struck the Rangers player with his stick, sending him to the ice unconscious. Murphy was rushed to the hospital where he was found to have a broken jaw and concussion. Geoffrion was given a match penalty with automatic $100 fine by referee [Red] Storey. Geoffrion said that Murphy had struck him first and coach [Dick] Irvin of Canadiens supported him in this contention. After a week of examining evidence in this matter, president Campbell pronounced that Geoffrion would be suspended from playing in the remaining seven games scheduled between the Canadiens and Rangers while Murphy would be suspended from the next four games between those teams. Coach Hap Day of Toronto was quoted as saying it seemed more than a coincidence that the Canadiens were nearly always involved in the brawls that had taken place.”
By the way, there is page after page of this.
Finally, I see that Ted Nugent has called the Parkland survivors “mushy brained children.”
Maybe he’s available for next year’s All-Star Game.