What’s Driving the Rise in NHL Rating?

We’re less than a week into the NHL season and we’ve already seen a small spike in goals. In Thursday’s games, the average NHL team scored 2.7 goals per 60 minutes of play per Natural Stat trick, which is the highest rate of 5-on-5 goals since at least 2008. Additionally, NHL goalies have had a tough time: They combined saved 91.3 percent of shots in 5v5, which would be the lowest year on average.

It’s an interesting trend that has continued across multiple seasons: The NHL save percentage peaked in the 2015-16 season when goaltenders made 92.5 percent of saves. Since then, that number has steadily declined, dropping a full ten points at the start of the 2022-23 season after landing at 91.6 percent last season. To put that in perspective, the worst team in 15-16 (Calgary at 91.1 percent) would have finished 24th in 21-22, almost entirely out of the league’s bottom ten.

There are a few plausible options for the drop in savings percentage, and I’d happily spend time researching each of them.

First, and most obviously, the pandemic resulted in expanded rosters in the 20-21 and 21-22 seasons, allowing many more players who wouldn’t be snooping on the NHL to play. There were 115 goalkeepers in the starting XI last season compared to just 85 in 15-16. It goes without saying that a team’s ninth or tenth defender is far better prepared for the NHL than their fourth or fifth goaltender.

Second, the skaters are catching up with the goaltenders. While a decade ago it was common for goalies to have their own individual camps and coaches, it is now expected that many of the sport’s elite forwards will work together and hone their skills over the summer. Coaches like Darryl Belfry run summer camps for elite players who make it their full-time job making life difficult for opposing defenders and goalies.

Third, goalkeepers are generally getting worse. We are at the end of a golden age of goalkeeping in which rising goalkeepers are unable to fill the gap left by goalkeepers like Carey Price and Tuukka Rask. Worse, NHL teams limit their goaltender searches to those 6ft 2 or taller (only three of the 20 goaltenders called up last June were smaller than that height), narrowing opportunities for potentially talented goaltenders.

Fourth, and what I’m going to discuss today, teams are much more efficient with their rosters than they used to be.

Fighting has not left the NHL entirely. Tanner Jeannot led the NHL with 14 fights last season, according to the invaluable HockeyFights.net. That’s more than 15-16 season leader Cody McLeod, who led the league with 12 fights.

However, what sets Jeannot apart from McLeod is that Jeannot is a much better hockey player. Jeannot finished seventh in Calder Trophy voting last season, was a mainstay in the third row for the Predators, and averaged over 16 minutes a game. He also scored 41 points in 81 games. McLeod, on the other hand, averaged just over 10 minutes per game and had just 13 points. In fact, in his previous three seasons, which peaked at 15-16, he only averaged 38 points despite playing almost every game.

Some of the other players who ranked in the top 10 forwards fighting majors also had very productive seasons. Runner-up to battling Majors, Nic Deslauriers was possibly Anaheim’s top forward, shooting regularly on penalties, last season. Marcus Foligno, who had 10 fights and finished fifth, was a mainstay on what may be the league’s strongest line of control.

Compare that to previous years and you’ll see a whole different caliber of players on this list, which brings me to the point: The NHL’s third and fourth tiers have improved greatly over the past decade, and roster spots used to be for players like Cody McLeod reserved or Zack Stortini or Jared Boll or George Parros or any number of classic enforcer types, are now used on stronger depth players.

In the lineups posted by teams in their opening games, there are only two players by my count who fit this definition of player: The Avalanche managed to find a roster spot for Kurtis MacDermid, who is listed as a defender, but averaged just 7:24 Ice Age last season. The Blue Jackets did the same for Mathieu Olivier, who averaged a fight every eight games during his pro career and had just 11 points in 46 games in the AHL last season.

That being said, when the NHL fourth line hits the ice, we’re far more likely to see something resembling hockey than we used to be. The average call-up player scored 1.20 points per 60 last season, 22 percent above the trough for that type of player (0.96 p/60) in ’14-15. (In comparison, first-line players are up 21 percent over the same period, 2.21 last season versus 1.83 in ’14-15). More tellingly, when Conscripts were on the ice last season, they averaged 1.96 goals per 60 minutes and conceded 2.43 goals. These rates are both well above the 1.64 GF/60 and 2.06 GA/60 from the low scoring ’15-16 season.

This means there is no break for the defense.

While defending a two-goal lead against the Kings in the third half on Tuesday night, the Predators successfully prevented the Kings stars from leveling the game but conceded a goal against the Kings fourth line (on a Brendan Lemieux Rush up ice) and Third Line (with Quentin Byfield and Gabe Vilardi playing 4v4 together). It’s a lot harder to defend those types of deep plays than it was in 2016 when the corresponding fourth liner might have been Jordan Nolan or Kyle Clifford.

Teams still value size in attack, but they also demand that those players need to be able to keep up with a charge rather than just landing a couple of hits and scoring the occasional goal.

Data is from Natural Stat Trick

(Photo by Tanner Jeannot: John Russell/NHLI via Getty Images)