from Travis Yost of TSN,

Since the 2004-05 lockout, the National Hockey League has observed an interesting – if gradual – change in scoring. In the early years immediately after the lockout, it seemed as though goals were nearly impossible to come by after the month of October. As the regular season progressed and playoff races took shape, teams would choke the life out of games and turn almost every contest into hockey’s version of trench warfare.

Outside of a fleeting attempt at increasing the quality of the game by juicing power-play opportunities and reducing the size of goaltender equipment, the league hasn’t seen a single obvious rule change that would explain a significant shift in scoring. And yet, year after year, we have seen scoring slowly increase league wide.

We can certainly point to other factors that may explain increases in offence: teams have become much more receptive to recruiting outside of North American markets (though this is also true for goaltenders) to widen the talent pool, and have become less inclined to play enforcer and checking-line-type forwards who have historically suppressed scoring.

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