If you glance at the Flames first two preseason game sheets you'll notice there hasn't been a lot of even-strength scoring. In fact, of the 8 goals scored, only 2 have been at 5on5.
Since two games isn't really a big enough sample to be drawing any conclusions, I took a cursory glance at the other boxscores over at nhl.com. I discovered that the PPG is thus far the ruler of this young exhibition season: Of the games I looked at, there was a total of 71 goals scored, 42 of which were on the PP. Twenty-seven were even-strength tallies and 2 were short-handed. That's 60% of scoring coming with the man-advantage (versus about 38% at ES). The Flames themselves have only potted one ES marker in the last 2 games (not that that's anything strange for Calgary mind you).
I haven't been able to come up with any solid theories explaining the preponderance of PP goals, except perhaps:
- Power play scoring may be always markedly higher in the preseason (though I haven't noticed it before) thanks to the number of rookies in everyone's rosters. Power-play save percentage for decent NHL starters is typically somewhere in the .800-.900 range so it wouldn't be surprising if rookie and bubble net-minders were siginificantly worse than that - say in the .700-.750 area. Especially when the team in front of them is peppered with inexperienced defenders.
- There are a lot of penalties being called, putting a strain on the PK units. This could be due to an impetus from the league to crack-down on a certain infraction (I've seen 3 diving penalties already) or the fact that rooks just take more penalties for a variety of reasons - can't keep up, overly aggressive, etc.
Just a thought on something I noticed and found odd. There's lots of games left and as more and more veterans are inserted into the line-ups one would assume that PP scoring is going to be appropriately oppressed as the exhibition games wind down. Still, I'll be interested to see if this trend peters out entirely by October 4th...
