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This is more than just the playoffs or teams just having a bad night. During the first half of the 2010 season there were at least 9 games where the goal difference was 15 or more. According to Massey ratings for the first half of the season, the AVERAGE score was 4.36-0.49 for ALL games (1069). That means for all those 1 and 2 goal difference games, there were quite a few where the margin was greater than 4 to balance to the overall 4 goal difference on average. There are a whole lot of one-sided games going on each season!



And this doesn't include all the games where a team spends 50+% of their time not trying to score. If they did, it would be MUCH worse.