James Mirtle of the Toronto Globe And Mail had a great post last month on where this year’s Caps rank all-time in goals scored per game compared to the NHL average for a given season. Updating the numbers as of March 15: The Caps have 266 goals – or 3.86 goals per game. Vancouver is in second place with 225 goals (3.26 gpg). That’s just a huge margin at this point. Only five NHL teams are averaging above 3 goals per game in 2009-10. The Caps are a hot streak away from hitting 4. Okay, a very, very hot streak. Like 26 goals in their next four games. Whatever. Close enough.
There have been 5,665 goals scored so far this season and 2,048 NHL games played. That gives the league an average of 2.77 goals per game. At 3.86 the Caps are scoring 39.4% above that mark. According to Mirtle’s original numbers, that scoring rate puts Washington at sixth in NHL history. That’s exactly where it was on Feb. 3 when they stood 38.4% above the league average. The Caps still rank just behind the 1973-74 Boston Bruins (39.7%) and 1995-96 Pittsburgh Penguins (40.4%) and could conceivably catch those two teams and jump into fourth all time. The 1983-84 Edmonton Oilers (41.6%), 1976-77 Montreal Canadiens (45.8%) and 1970-71 Bruins (64.1%) rank top three and are out of reach barring a General Sherman-style march through opposing defenses these last 13 games.
That 1970-71 Bruins total is absurd, by the way. It’s like God created Bobby Orr and dropped him into that era just to mess with everybody. If aliens in some distant galaxy created super robot hockey players in a lab and forced Gary Bettman to play them in the NHL right now they wouldn’t score 64% more goals than the league average. Did goalies back then just cry themselves to sleep at night? What made them show up to the rink?
Anyway, the Caps need 65 goals in their last 13 games to break the franchise record of 330 set in 1991-92. That’s 5 per game so it’s probably not happening. Washington also scored 325 goals in 1992-93 and 322 in 1984-85. Since the 1996-97 season, only five NHL teams have averaged more than 3.5 goals per game for an entire year. The 2005-06 Ottawa Senators have been the gold standard for this 13-season era. That group scored at a 3.76 goals per game clip. Sorry. This was just an extremely long-winded exercise proving the Caps are good at putting pucks into the opposing net. Carry on.
