We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.

Published|Updated

It feels like we just got started, but we’ve hit the halfway point of the NHL season, and to mark the occasion, the league tweeted out some stats, and one of the big takeaways was that it has been a bad year to be a goalie.

The league posted a graphic with six stats about the season so far, and they’re all pretty interesting.

Alright, quite a bit to unpack, but let’s start with the big one. So far this season, the average NHL game includes 6.1 goals. 

I like solid defense as much as the next guy, but we all know it’s lamp-lighting that puts butts in seats, so that’s good to know. It’s also interesting to look at that stat in the age of legalized sports betting. I remember especially early this season, overs were hitting left and right.

According to the league, this is the fourth season in which the league average has been over 6 goals per game.

So, if goals are being scored in high volumes, then goalies must be taking a beating then, right? 

Yeah, kind of.

The average save percentage this season is .900 which per the NHL is the lowest it has been in the post-lockout era and the third lowest in the last thirty years.

As for overtime, the league says that 76.5% of games that go beyond regulation end in 3-on-3 overtime, which I feel like was thrown in to get people to stop whining about shootouts (didn’t work though; get rid of them and give us more 3-on-3(.

I can’t see any way that these trends change in the back nine of this season. If anything, you’d expect them to stay more or less the same, but now I’m curious, so I hope the league gives us some end-of-the-year numbers as well.