Following the 2004–05 NHL lockout, the league took the opportunity presented by the season-long respite to make some dramatic changes to its game, most of which were designed to increase goal scoring. The prevailing belief was that interest in the NHL had waned in lockstep with a corresponding decrease in goals, and that some creative rule changes would fix the problem. Unfortunately, it hasn’t taken very long — only about 2 1/3 seasons — for the NHL to once again find itself discussing a dearth of goal scoring.

At the end of last month, the NHL’s board of governors met in Pebble Beach, Calif., to discuss the state of the game. By and large, the conclusion was that the game is just fine as is, and doesn’t require further tinkering.

“The way the game is played today, there’s a lot of good coaches,” the Rangers’ general manager, Glen Sather, said. “There are a lot of smart, tactical people playing the game the way it should be played. … I think it’s a wonderful game the way it is today. Just because the goal scoring is not as high as everybody would like it to be, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the game.”

Over the course of the past month, new NHLPA head Paul Kelly and ombudsman Eric Lindros have been visiting with each team, doing their own reconnaissance regarding the NHL’s health. Interestingly, what Sather saw as strength, Kelly saw as cause for concern.

“We think there are too many coaches on the benches and up in the box,” Kelly said in an interview with the Washington Post. “I’m a coach myself, but with all of the coaches on the bench and in the box talking on headsets, when a player comes off, they start preaching defense, defense, defense. That does impact the game and coaches adapt to playing a more defensive style of game. Frankly, I prefer a more wideopen, rock ’em, sock ’em kind of game.”

That goal scoring has fallen precipitously is not a matter for debate (see chart). But it’s taken coaches only 2 1/3 seasons to effectively neutralize its impact, and so the red lamp isn’t lighting much more often this season (5.45 times a game) than it did back in 2003-04, the season prior to the lockout (5.14). Rather than having a longterm positive effect on goal scoring, the crackdown on obstruction and hooking has instead affected a severe increase in the number of dangerous collisions in the offensive zone, particularly along the boards and in front of the goal.

A common argument is that expansion has diluted the league’s talent base, a key reason why excellence is fleeting and top-tier offensive performances are so rare. But a quick look across the league yields a different conclusion. The fall of the former Soviet Union provided the NHL with a huge pool of highly talented players to choose from, and the total number of them has more than filled out the rosters of the nine teams added since the early 1990s. Moreover, it’s typically only the best players from those former Soviet bloc nations that make their way to North America, a key reason why they represent a disproportionate percentage of the NHL’s top offensive stars.

Ironically, it’s the increase in overall skill — rather than a dilution of the talent pool — that’s prevented the league’s stars from differentiating themselves in the same dramatic fashion as did Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux in the high-scoring 1980s and early 1990s.

Whereas Gretzky and Lemieux were able to feast upon the likes of Murray Baron and Jay Wells on a near-nightly basis, today the difference between Sidney Crosby and an opposing team’s sixth defenseman is far slimmer. Without that huge differential in skill, it is much more difficult to penetrate the opposition’s defense and generate high-quality scoring chances.

“We’ve taken just about every bad skater there was in the league and he’s not playing,” the coach of the San Jose Sharks, Ron Wilson, said in an interview with ESPN. “That’s especially true on the back end. That’s a good thing; but on the other hand; it’s a bad thing for offensive hockey. I wish we had all the bad skaters playing defense so you could skate around them. Now, everybody’s eliminated their bad-skating defensemen and now they’ve all learned how to defend, generally speaking.”

Further exacerbating the problem, huge improvements in goaltending strategy and equipment have had a huge effect on the number of goals scored even when high-quality scoring chances are created.

Today’s goalie gear is far lighter and much better at repelling moisture, enabling netminders to remain at or near top effectiveness throughout the duration of every game. And today’s goalies are much larger, making it possible for them to drop down into the butterfly — effectively blocking off the entire ice surface — and still cover a huge percentage of the top half of the net. By being bigger in the goal, it becomes less necessary for goalies to make sensational saves; instead, consistently strong positioning is the biggest key to success.

Indeed, it seems that the NHL’s perceived weakness — a lack of goal scoring — is in fact due to its unprecedented strength. The quality of the coaching and the players — in particular, the goaltenders — is at an all-time high. A combination of skill, conditioning, and equipment advancements are allowing the game to be played at a blisteringly fast pace. And the presence of the finest players from across the world gives the NHL an international flair unmatched by the other major sports: football, baseball, and basketball.

Focusing on that strength, and capitalizing on it, should be the NHL’s primary focus moving forward. Getting fans excited about the skill demonstrated not only by its offensive stars, but also its tenacious defenders and spectacular goaltenders, would help make the NHL’s television broadcasts more compelling, and would also increase interest in purchasing tickets. In sharp contrast, focusing on the decrease in goal scoring — and searching for a panacea — would only serve to further diminish interest in the game, calling needless attention to a problem that doesn’t really exist.

Mr. Greenstein is the editor in chief of InsideHockey.com.