The Official 2017-18 Regular Season Talk Thread

[Majingir]

Auston Matthews with his 2nd OT goal of the year! Leafs FINALLY beat the Habs.

[TheMatrix31]

Kucherov is out of this world so far.

[bcruise]

Wow, the Blues' ability to play 55 minutes of hockey and completely fall apart in the last 5 is truly unmatched.

Also this play was pretty blatantly offside and they're probably going to get bailed out on a challenge. Temporarily.

They held on to beat the Avs 4-3. Crazy scramble at the end.

[Chrisksaint]

Lightning have started pretty well. Hopefully everyone stays healthy. When Stamkos might be the 3rd best on the team can't really complain

[bcruise]

Blues see the Vegas Golden Knights for the first time tonight. Should be fun.

Sent from my SM-G930P using Operation Sports mobile app

[Majingir]

Leafs season so far has been strange. Lost to Devils and Sens but beat Rangers, Habs, Caps, Hawks and now Kings! So far, they're looking for real. Let's hope they keep it up. Leafs dominating nhl is best for business.

I think Doughty might have some interest here. Earlier in year he was talking about knowing how guys don't want to play here because of the attention and pressure. Now he's talking about leafs not being contenders yet only because of their defence. He's exactly what the Leafs need, just too bad they probably can't get him. Even Liljegren in deal won't be enough. And they probably don't got cap space for doughty signing once he hits FA

[TheMatrix31]

1 game yesterday, 2 games today. Stupid.

Rangers are horrendous. Another terrible loss at home tonight. I really think Alain Vigneault's time is coming to an end soon.

[Majingir]

The lack of slashing really seems to help with goal scoring right now, but looking at stats, it's mostly because of more shots than anything else. Unfortunately, this might be a temporary thing(like in 05-06 where we saw lots of goals because everyone was getting use to new rules).

GAA are up to 2.90 compared to around 2.5-2.6 the past several years. This is highest number since it was 2.93 in 05-06.

Teams currently averaging over 32 shots per game. Since the stat has been tracked, no season has had had an average above 31. The SV% this season is very similar to how it's been the past 15 years(.910 this year compared to around .913 many of past 15 seasons).

It's not a permanent solution, but it's definitely a start. If the league refuses to change goalie equipment, maybe just having more shots is the other solution to getting goal scoring up. Goalies get to keep their precious SV% numbers and players get to shoot/score more often.