The Globe and Mail's Eric Duhtaschek penned an article about the decline of the "pure goal-scorer," and in asking why scoring continues to decline, he went to the party that is, in my opinion, the biggest culprit--a member of the NHL's digital video-equipped coaches:

“If you watch the game now compared to 20 years ago, you don’t see nearly as many mistakes happen,” [Phoenix Coyotes coach Dave] Tippett said. “I do believe coaching is very strong, but the other thing is players have a lot at stake financially now. … Players work hard not to make mistakes and if they do make a mistake, they work hard to get the mistake back.

“The evolution of goaltending, and goaltending equipment, and far fewer mistakes in the game is the reason why scoring is down. We can tweak it however we want, but if you watch a game from 20 or 25 years ago, and see how many mistakes are made – the number of 2-on-1s, the lack of back pressure, the lack of back-checking – it is a very different game than now.”