from Sean McIndoe at Sportsnet,

So today, let’s look at a half-dozen early trends from the first week of the season that hockey fans should be hoping will continue, even though we know they probably won’t. At least we’ll be able to say we enjoyed them while they lasted.

Scoring is up

The NHL has spent the better part of two decades wringing its hands over an ongoing decline in scoring, without ever actually doing all that much about it. That continued this year when the league announced that they'd introduce smaller goaltending equipment, only to fail to have it ready in time for the season.

Maybe we didn't need it after all. Through the first few games, average scoring is up by roughly half-a-goal per team. We've seen scores like 7-4, 6-5, 6-4 and then 7-4 again, and so far there hasn't been a single shutout on the season (kind of).

Best of all, the increase hasn't simply been caused by more power plays, like the 2005-06 spike that turned out not to last. And it's all adding up an unusually high number of big comebacks. So what's going on? It's tempting to shrug it all off as just a quirk of small sample size, but that doesn't seem to tell the whole story.

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