from Travis Yost of TSN,

It has been a subtle shift over time, but scoring in the National Hockey League continues to climb. With no obvious, singular smoking-gun to explain the rising goal totals, hypothesizing continues unabated.

We already know that some observable shifts league-wide are helping the cause. The most obvious example? Teams are more aggressive shooting the puck, realizing that shot volume is a better relative driver of goal scoring than shot quality, though both are desirable components....

Shot rates are up, and so too are shooting percentages on those attempts. Why is that important? Players haven’t started to trade out quantity for quality. The proportional increase in shots, to a reasonable degree, can explain why scoring around the league has started to tick up.

But it doesn’t serve to answer the question of how teams are creating these additional shooting opportunities, or why offensive shot creation has relatively superseded defensive shot suppression.

read on, with charts and graphs...