An increase in the number of teams could increase the NHL’s average goal average.
In the upcoming season, 32 teams will play in the hockey league NHL, but according to rumors spread in North America, in the near future, as many as 34–36 teams could compete for the Stanley Cup.
This is what NHL insider reporters believe Andy Strickland and Kevin Weekes. The matter is reported, among other things, by the respected sports media The Athletic.
Strickland says in the message service X that the owners of the NHL would be meeting to approve the opening of the expansion. According to him, Houston and Atlanta would be the most potential new NHL cities.
Higher numbers of goals?
According to The Athletic, increasing the number of teams would not only increase the league’s income through expansion fees, but it would also likely increase the goals per game average.
In the 2000s, the number of NHL teams has been increased twice: the Vegas Golden Knights joined the league in the 2017-2018 season and the Seattle Kraken four years later.
The Athletic highlights how the NHL’s goal averages increased when both Vegas and Seattle joined the league. According to the newspaper, the increase in the number of teams is one of the reasons for the increase in the number of goals.
This has mostly happened in previous years as well, when the league has gradually grown from six original teams to its current size.
In the 2023–2024 season, an average of 6.22 goals were scored per game in the NHL.
NHL reporter Dom Luszczyszyn calculated that based on just math, if the number of teams increases to 34, the goal average would probably be 6.48. With 36 teams, you would expect an average of 6.58 goals per half.
More excitement
Each new team would mean 20 more players. According to The Athletic, adding replacement-level players to the league seems to correlate with the league’s goal average.
If more goals were scored during the season, the league’s goals tally could be even better. For example, 69 goals were scored in the regular season last season by Auston Matthews the number of goals could have been closer to 73 goals with a larger number of teams.
The winner of last season’s regular season point exchange with 144 points Nikita Kucherov the balance, on the other hand, could have been as much as 150 points if an average of 6.6 goals per match had been scored in the entire league.
On the other hand, the higher number of power points of the star players would make the games even more exciting and also attract fans to the stands.