'Getting more brave': Behind the numbers of the CPL's best attacking season ever

The Canadian Premier League is on track for its highest-scoring season ever in 2025, with 262 tallies recorded so far through 88 games.

With an average of 2.98 goals scored in each regular season match this year, this campaign is well outstripping the previous highest mark of 2.61 set back in 2023, where we saw 292 total goals scored across 112 games.

Currently, Atlético Ottawa's Sam Salter leads the way with a CPL-record 15 goals this season, but the stars have been shining across the league. Tiago Coimbra (11), David Rodríguez, Julian Altobelli (both 9), Ali Musse, Brian Wright and Tobias Warschewski (all 8) have each had outstanding individual scoring seasons so far. Salter will probably hold on to win the Golden Boot, but in any other year all of those players would've been very serious contenders.

A year ago, eight different players scored at least eight goals in the regular season, which was the most in CPL history. This season, we've already got seven players to his the eight-goal mark, with six matchweeks left (and four players on six or seven goals).

Why, though, is scoring so high? Is it a fluke? Are teams just scoring more penalties? — We can actually rule that last one out; this year's average of 0.31 penalties per game isn't far off last year's 0.29, and below the high mark of 0.35 set in 2022.

Is there more attacking football being played in this year's CPL, then? Some of the numbers suggest so.

This campaign so far has featured not only the most goals per game, but also the most shots, expected goals, and touches in the box, indicating that teams are getting into more dangerous areas with higher frequency and pulling the trigger.

Here's how the numbers stack up for each of the past five CPL seasons. This kind of data isn't available for the 2019 and 2020 campaigns, but we do know that the league averaged 2.54 and 2.61 goals per regular season game in those years, respectively.

All stats are averaged out per match, of course.

Certainly, a few teams have pulled more of the weight than others this year. Atlético Ottawa and Forge FC, who have scored 44 and 40 goals, respectively, are both well within sight of the CPL record for goals by a team in one season. Cavalry FC scored 51 back in 2019; Ottawa are on pace for 56, while Forge are in line for 50.9, so they too could certainly hit the mark.

The fact that there's such a gap between the CPL's top and bottom teams this year (38 points between first and eighth already, and 12 just between fifth and sixth) does contribute; on more than one occasion, the top sides have delivered lopsided wins over teams near the bottom.

However, every team has contributed. Valour FC beat Vancouver FC 5-2 last Friday; Vancouver themselves have scored four goals on two occasions (a 4-4 draw and a 5-4 loss). This CPL season has featured multiple 5-1 and 5-0 scorelines and five 3-2 games, and even teams close to each other in the playoff race have routed one another this year.

We've seen a total of 15 games feature five or more combined goals — more than any other season.

In the past week, a number of CPL coaches have offered their thoughts on why scoring might be up this year.

Patrice Gheisar, whose Halifax Wanderers are on pace for about 41 goals (passing their club-record 39), offered three potential reasons: Improvements in coaching, higher-quality attacking players, and braver tactics.

"The coaches are all getting better, the tactics of every team is getting better, every team is a bit stronger," he said.

"All of our players are getting better and better. The current leading goalscorer [Salter] has been in the league for quite a few years, and he's one that's gotten better. You could see players improving. And of course, there are some new additions that have improved the league and its quality. For us, [Jason] Bahamboula and Yohan [Baï] have done that, and for Ottawa, you can see David Rodríguez doing that."

As Gheisar explained, though, it's not just good players producing more goals. It's the fact that teams are trying harder to score more.

"Teams have become more brave in attacking," he explained. "It's not just about Sammy Salter's goals, it's CDMs that are setting up the goals by going more forward. ... Teams are getting more brave and committing more numbers to the attack."

It has also helped that a fair few matches have seemed to develop into these high-scoring, blow-for-blow affairs pretty early in the contest, and that so many games are settled late in the day.

The five-team playoff format might be a contributing factor; after two years of it in action, clubs know just how valuable each place in the table is, which seems to have incentivized them to fight back in games and go for a win rather than a draw.

We've already seen 62 goals in the last 15 minutes (plus stoppage time) of games, which is on pace to shatter the league's single-season record of 67. A determination to either add to a lead, or try and come back, late in a game seems to be giving us a lot more results that either end as high-scoring close games, or lopsided wins like the Wanderers' recent back-to-back four-goal victories at home over Valour and York.

"I think this league has always had exciting football," Forge head coach Bobby Smyrniotis said recently.

"Teams a lot of times play a little bit open; in a lot of games, you see there's a lot of transitions, a lot of teams really opening up the pitch, and that leads to high-quality chances to be scored. That's something I'll look forward to seeing at the end of the year: how much of these goals and the increase comes due to transitions, and seeing where the trends are. But we've got some exciting talent in this league, some good attacking players. You want goals, and that's why we play this game, to score more than the opponent."

Smyrniotis may be onto something with pointing out the transitions; the pace and direct play of players like Warschewski, Coimbra, Rodríguez and Nana Ampomah has been a nightmare for defenders to deal with all year, which helps them open games up and

The consensus of coaches across the CPL is that the quality of attacking players is higher than ever, and that a higher-scoring league is generally a good thing. Fans always want to see goals, and players want to score them.

Does a higher-scoring season cause headaches for defenders and goalkeepers? Absolutely. And does it make life harder for coaches, who have to figure out how to shut down the Salters of the world? Sure, but they're the ones setting their teams up for these attack-minded styles as well.

There are a lot of possible reasons why we're seeing so many goals scored this year.

Whatever the cause may be, we're not complaining. If we're fortunate enough to be watching the CPL's first ever 300-goal season, surely something is going right across the league.