With 14 games on the docket, Wednesday night had the potential to bring some clarity to the race for the 2023 MLS Golden Boot, the award given to Major League Soccer’s top season scorer.

Instead, Cucho Hernandez scored a hat trick and Jesus Ferreira added a brace.

When the smoke cleared, only thee goals separated the top 11 contenders for the honor with only a month remaining in the regular season. If it finished that way, it would mark the closest the top 10 MLS scorers have finished since an ugly 2004 campaign, where they winner Eddie Johnson bagged only 12 goals.

To some extent, it would also continue a trend that began with the pandemic, which brought the end to a string of two- or three-horse races. And while you could assign the phenomenon to random variance — which probably partly plays a role — there are also some leaguewide trends that are contributing to such a crowded final dash.

Here’s three of the clearest.

Of the 11 players to have scored between 12 and 15 goals, only two of them — Atlanta’s Giorgos Giakoumakis and Dallas’ Jesus Ferreira — come closer to the mold of a traditional center forward than to an attacking central midfielder.

The majority of the list is comprised of players who can create chances nearly as well as they can finish them. That leads to slightly depressed goals totals for players who are still leading their teams in overall goal involvements, at least relative to the second half of the last decade. Back then, No. 9s like Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Josef Martinez, Bradley Wright-Phillips, Nemanja Nikolic were among the cream of the MLS attacking crop.

Additionally, the two highest-paid center forwards in the league currently have also had disappointing seasons. The LA Galaxy lost Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez to a season-ending injury back in the spring. And D.C. United’s Christian Benteke has fallen off his early pace, currently sitting on 10 goals.

In some ways this is related to the previous trend, but it deserves its own category.

Of the top five non-penalty goal scorers this season, only Ferreira is also his team’s first-choice shooter from the spot. And Dallas has suffered through a 56-game drought without a penalty before Ferreira converted one for the first of two goals in Wednesday night’s 3-1 win at Real Salt Lake.

Philadelphia’s Julian Carranza would be looking at a 20-goal season if he took most penalties instead of Daniel Gazdag, who is in Golden Boot contention almost entirely because of spot kicks. LAFC’s Denis Bouanga would probably be closer to 17 or 18 goals if he wasn’t ceding penalty duty on most occasions to Carlos Vela.

In a couple cases, we’ve also seen players who appear capable of posting 20-plus goal seasons do their best work this year in other competitions.

Denis Bouanga is the best example of this, having scored an exceptional 27 goals this season in all competitions for LAFC. But fully 13 of those came outside MLS play — seven in the 2023 Concacaf Champions League and another six in the 2023 Leagues Cup. Philadelphia’s Gazdag also has seven goals outside league play, bringing his total for the season to 19 in all competitions.

While it might seem normal that the best attackers are playing in more competitions than the rest of their colleagues, that’s not always the case in MLS. In particular, the level of parity leads to continental commitments being distributed historically across a wider swath of teams than most other leagues.

In other years, those players might be doing more of their scoring in MLS play, lifting their totals above the rest of the pack.