Kovacevic: Goals are back in NHL, but why?

NEWARK, N.J. -- Not so long ago, I thought of this as the Graveyard of Goals. The place where offense came to die.

But just as the Devils have changed in the past couple years, finally dumping the most dreadfully dull system in hockey history in favor of one that's fun and fast and all kinds of Taylor Hall, so, too, has the entirety of the NHL: Scoring is way up, by nearly a full goal from just two seasons ago -- 6.19 goals per game now compared to 5.53 in 2016-17 -- as are shots and shooting percentage.

The broader ascendance is amazing, actually:

This is, of course, an immensely welcome, if insanely overdue development.

Offense in the NHL bottomed out for the better part of Gary Bettman's tenure as commissioner, ushered in by New Jersey's neutral-zone trap, then mimicked by others across the continent. Hooking and holding became as much a part of the sport as skating and stickhandling. It became common to see forwards skating backward. And then, even as the game began to morph out of that with a fresh emphasis on calling penalties following the yearlong lockout in 2004, size began to take the place of speed, as the bigger, badder Kings and others won Stanley Cups through bulk.

Now, though ...

"It's totally different," Casey DeSmith was telling me Monday after practice in Cranberry. He'll be the Penguins' starter tonight against the very different Devils at Prudential Arena. "I swear, I was watching a rerun game the other night on NHL Network, from 1995."

Uh-oh. The year of New Jersey's first Cup.

"Yeah, I think so. And the style of play was ... I mean, everyone was hanging onto everyone. It was, like, you were surprised anyone could move at all. There was no room, no speed, no rushes, nothing."

Yep. It's remembered far too well, unfortunately. And hey, thanks, Lou Lamoriello and Jacques Lemaire, for all that nothing. When the Devils invest their pregame tonight in a ceremony celebrating the great Martin Brodeur on his recent Hall of Fame induction, they should similarly raise to the rafters the No. 0 in honor of what those two gentlemen wrought for two excruciating decades.

Better yet, they could erect a new statue next to the one of Brodeur outside that depicts fans dozing off:

No one's sleeping through this season, of course. In addition to all the basic stats cited above, there’s been a bunch of reasons to love the NHL's product anew:

• Young players are excelling again: The Avalanche's Mikko Rantanen, 22, is the league's leading scorer with 22 points. Six of the next 10 guys behind him -- teammate Nathan MacKinnon, the Bruins' David Pastrnak, the Oilers' Connor McDavid, the Senators' Thomas Chabot, the Hurricanes' Sebastian Aho and the Canadiens' Max Domi -- are 23 or younger. And even that's leaving out the Canucks' breathtaking rookie Elias Pettersson, a 20-year-old with 10 goals in his first 13 NHL games.

• Stars can be stars again: The Bruins' Patrice Bergeron is second in scoring at age 33, and Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Alexander Ovechkin and other 30-something superstar mainstays continue to make magic on a near-nightly basis. If anything, their highlights feel even more eye-catching than in years past:

• Skill's the norm again: The Jets' Blake Wheeler and the Blues' Ryan O’Reilly currently have 10-game points streaks. There have already been six of those this season, in stark contrast to 17 all of last season. There have been 16 hat tricks, including one by Phil Kessel, the most to this stage of a season since 2007. And four five-point performances, the most to this stage since 2010.

• Attacking means attacking again: Team strategies, only recently extra cautious right from the drop of the puck, are now primarily about scoring right away. There have been 21 goals scored in the opening minute of a game this season, the most to this stage since 1992. And the gunning never stops. Get this: The Hurricanes, in beating the Blackhawks last night in Raleigh, 3-2 in overtime, registered 40 shots for the 11th time this season, most for any team to this stage since the Bobby Orr/Phil Esposito Bruins in 1970!

• Games are games again: This one blows my mind: 43.6 percent of all games have seen the winning team trail at some point. The Wild, for example, have rallied back in eight of their 11 victories. No statistical comparison needed here, at least not for anyone who remembers leaving for the parking lot at the second intermission of a single-goal deficit.

So, how has this happened?

What's made the most significant difference?

It's funny, but the one subject that's raised most of the fuss in this regard among national media across the U.S. and Canada has been the shrinking of goaltending equipment. But in my survey of several Penguins after practice Tuesday, that was the one nobody brought up ... except the one time I did.

"Equipment? No, that's not it," DeSmith responded with a dismissive flick of the right hand. "If you ask me, I'd just say that the players are awesome now."

They're awesome? That's it?

"I'm serious. You've got skilled guys on all four lines now, guys who can shoot, guys who can create. That wasn't the case maybe even just five years ago."

Hm. The league's shooting percentage just moved above 9 -- 9.1, specifically -- for the first time since the mid-1980s. But that also was back when goaltenders weren't nearly as equipped or methodical as now, so there has to be more to it.

I turned to one of the older guys, and this began getting warm.

"It's the physical play," Kris Letang came back ... and ended right there.

What did he mean?

"It's gone. That's it. It's just gone. Nobody hits anybody."

Few would argue, but why?

"Well, by changing the league to the way it is -- and I think that started back with the lockout -- you need faster players. So when you want to get faster, you're usually going to get smaller players. Look at the defensemen in this league now, how much smaller they are. So down low, you've got these smaller guys who don't hit, and that makes it harder to defend. And because they're calling penalties now, you can't use your stick to hook or crosscheck guys."

So, it's kind of like the NFL creating more offense through pass interference calls?

"That's exactly it, actually. Exactly. Everything favors the offense."

Next, I went to one of those smaller guys who's maybe benefited as much as anyone from this trend.

"I just think guys are skating so much faster and, when you play the game at that level, it's harder to defend," Jake Guentzel said. "A few years ago, it was all about bigger, stronger guys. But the game now is all about speed."

Next came Riley Sheahan, who's responsible for all 200 feet.

"The biggest thing, to me, is seeing these young guys come into the league with all this speed and skill and making plays," he said. "Now you're seeing them cut to the middle of the ice, dangle, do whatever they have to. They're looking to make plays."

He added this vital footnote: "In the past, you'd maybe see those guys getting hit. Really hard. But the league's done better, I think, at getting those kinds of hits out of the game."

Both are sound points. But my favorite, predictably, came from the perpetually cerebral guy who also happens to be fastest on the roster.

"You want one thing? Just one thing?" Carl Hagelin asked back when I sought just one thing to explain all this. "I can't do that. It's more than one thing."

OK, then ...

"I think it starts with coaches giving more leeway to these kids coming into the league now. They're allowed to be creative right away. That's not how it was just a few years ago. Everybody had to fit in. Everybody had to play a certain way. Now, they know that offense is the way to go, and you've got to let those players play."

I loved this. And he had one more.

"These young kids now, they show up in the league in great shape, a lot more developed. They know how to build up their frames. They're part of great training programs. They watch YouTube clips on how to keep getting better. That plays a role, too. That doesn't mean you're going to walk into the league and be some unbelievable playoff player when that rolls around. That takes experience. But it does mean you're ready to show your skills right away."

I've been no fan of Bettman's body of work, in large part because of the disappearance of offense under his watch. I grew up in the era in which the once-in-a-lifetime talents of Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux transcended the sport, in which a babyfaced Teemu Selanne scored 76 goals as a rookie in Winnipeg. It felt like the normal. It felt like it could -- maybe even should -- go on forever. And once the Devils soiled the sport, and the commissioner simply stood by, it felt like there'd never be a recovery.

So here's a rarity for me: Credit to the commissioner for his role in this. Because Letang was correct to point back to the lockout for what was at least the start of enforcing obstruction rules. It's been inconsistently applied since then but, one way or another, it's never been better enforced than it is right now. That's indisputable.

Did Bettman push toward this or did the general managers, who handle almost all rule changes with complete autonomy?

Hard to say, but he's been an easy target over the years, so here's a tap of the stick to the boss.

The Devils?

Eh, I'm still sore about that. Ray Shero's a fine conductor, but it's still the last caboose hitching up to a train that's finally headed the right direction.

MATT SUNDAY GALLERY