from Frank Seravalli of TSN,
If you glanced at an NHL scoreboard on Tuesday night and didn’t know any better, you might’ve thought it was 1988 all over again.
Two games ended with a 7-4 final score, in addition to a 6-3 finish, highlighting the uptick in scoring to open the 2016-17 season.
It’s still early, but the NHL has averaged 6.26 goals per game through the first 50 games of the season, or nearly 5 per cent of the full schedule. If that average were to hold over the full campaign, it would be the NHL’s highest-scoring season since 1995-96, back when there were a staggering 12 players with 100-point seasons.
Those statistics are inclusive of Wednesday night’s games. Nearly one-fifth of the season schedule so far has produced a game with at least 10 goals.
In other words, fans have had plenty of reasons to cheer — except in Columbus, where the Blue Jackets remain the NHL’s last winless team for the second fall in a row.
Even the small sample size to start this season is impressive. When compared with other 50-game starts since before the NHL’s 2004-05 lost season, goal scoring is at its highest average since 2009-10.
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