Throughout the 2018-19 regular season we have looked at some stunning numbers from around NHL.
What stood out to us most as the Stanley Cup Playoffs are set to begin?
Let’s take a look…
1. Goal scoring goes up again. The average NHL game featured 5.96 goals per game this season, the highest it has been since the 2005-06 season when the league topped the six-goal per game mark coming out of the 2005 lockout.
If you remember, that was the year penalties skyrocketed around the league with the crackdown on obstruction and interference.
There are a lot of possibilities for the recent increase, including the smaller goalie gear to the continuation of 3-on-3 overtime, to any number of smaller changes in the league. It is never any one thing that leads to drops in scoring, and it is never any one thing that leads to increases. A lot of times it is simply a lot of smaller changes that add up into big changes, and there have been a few in the NHL in recent years with the goalies and overtime rules.
2. Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. The Edmonton Oilers’ teammates finished second and fourth respectively in the NHL scoring race, the first time a pair of teammates finished in the top-five since Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf did it for the Anaheim Ducks during the 2013-14 season.
It is the 15th time it has happened in the past 20 years.
What is stunning about it is the Oilers are only the third team out of that group to have actually missed the playoffs with two top-five scorers on their roster.
Two of the teams reached the Stanley Cup Final (one of them won it), three others went as far as the Conference Final, there was a Presidents’ Trophy winner, and a handful of teams that at least made it to Round 2.
The full list over the past 20 years:
Edmonton: 2018-19: Missed Playoffs
Anaheim 2013-14: Reached Round 2
Tampa Bay 2012-13: Missed playoffs
Tampa Bay 2010-11: Reached Eastern Conference Final
Vancouver 2010-11: Reached Stanley Cup Final
Washington 2009-10: Won Presidents’ Trophy, lost Round 1
Pittsburgh 2008-09: Won Stanley Cup
Tampa Bay 2006-07: Lost Round 1
Ottawa 2005-06: Reached Round 2
Colorado 2002-03: Lost Round 1
Vancouver 2001-02: Lost Round 1
Pittsburgh 2000-01: Reached Eastern Conference Final
Anaheim 1999-00: Lost Round 1
Anaheim 1998-99: Missed playoffs
Colorado 1998-99: Reached Western Conference Final
3. A big year for milestones. Alex Ovechkin and Draisaitl both hit the 50-goal mark this season, making it the first time since the 2011-12 season that two players did it in the same season. Draisaitl is also the first player other than Ovechkin to score 50 goals in a season since that year. There have only been 12 50-goal seasons over the past decade. Six of them belong to Ovechkin, two belong to Steven Stamkos, and Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby, Corey Perry, and Draisaitl all have one each.
There were also six player to top the 100-point mark, the most to do it in one year since the 2006-07 season when seven players did it.
4. All of the Lightning’s dominance. The Lightning’s 62 wins tied the NHL record for most wins in a single season, while their 3.89 goals per game average was the 20th best single season mark since 1990. All 19 teams ahead of them played between 1990 and 1995, just before the start of the NHL’s Dead Puck Era. They are one of only three teams in the top-40 that played after 1995.
Their 28.2 percent success rate on the power play was also the 10th best in NHL history. The nine teams ahead of them and the seven immediately after them all played in the 1970s or 1980s.
Not enough dominance? They became the first team since the 1995-96 Pittsburgh Penguins to feature three 40-goal scorers in the same season (Nikita Kucherov, Steven Stamkos, Brayden Point).
5. Chandler Stephenson’s historically clean season: The Capitals forward appeared in 64 games this season and did not take a single penalty, the only player in the league to play at least 60 games and not spend one minute in the penalty box. He is one of just 16 players in NHL history to play at least 60 games in a season and not take a penalty, and the first since Butch Goring during the 1980-81 season.
Dallas’ Valeri Nichushkin was close to joining him, going 57 games without a penalty (or a goal!).
6. Aleksander Barkov’s penalty dominance. We know Barkov is one of the game’s best players thanks to his combination of shutdown defense and now dominant offense, but he is consistently one of the league’s most valuable players in terms of giving his team’s a special teams advantage. Barkov drew 35 penalties this season while only being called for, a penalty differential of plus-31, the best in the league.
Other players that excelled in this area include Vancouver’s Elias Pettersson (plus-28), Carolina’s Warren Foegele (plus-22), and New Jersey’s Nico Hischier (plus-19).
7. The Islanders succeeded in going worst to first. No team in the NHL gave up more goals than the New York Islanders during the 2017-18 season, and no team gave up fewer goals during the 2018-19 season. They improved their goals against number by 102 goals in one season. That is more than stunning, it is completely insane. Read more here on how they did it.
8. Fighting is still rapidly going away. Anyone that is paying attention to the evolution of the NHL game knows that fighting is quickly disappearing from the sport, but you might be shocked as to just how much it is going away. There was not one player in the NHL this season that dropped the gloves more than six times (there were 10). Only three teams (Boston, New York Rangers, Ottawa) had more than 20 fights for the entire season.
9. Drew Doughty’s ugly season. From the moment he arrived in the NHL Doughty has been one of the NHL’s best defensive players. Between 2008-09 and 2017-18 there were only eight defenders in the NHL that had a better plus-minus than his plus-93. Say what you want about plus-minus (I know the flaws), but anyone that can play nearly a decade and be that far on the plus side in goals is probably pretty solid. This season? He finished as a minus-34, the second worst mark in the entire league, ahead of only Buffalo Sabres defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen. A lot of that is due to playing the most minutes on a lousy team whose starting goalie had a terrible year, but it is still unheard of to see Doughty that far down the list.
10. A stunning shootout stat. There were four teams that did not win a game in a shootout this season (the Toronto Maple Leafs, Calgary Flames, San Jose Sharks, and Ottawa Senators). Before this season there were only five teams in the entire shootout era that went a full season without a shootout win, and two of them came during the lockout shortened 2012-13 season. You can probably credit 3-on-3 overtime for that stat.
The Maple Leafs were only involved in two shootouts total this season, and both of them came in the final two weeks of the regular season.
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Adam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @AGretz.