Fellow dev here (though I can't take credit for anything on the bot), but I'd say...maybe. Unfortunately I'm not all-knowing, nor was I in the room when any of this was discussed, but I wonder if it had to do with the addition of more advanced stats. My understanding is that the NHL is actually trying to make stats more publicly accessible, so I'd say "no" off the cuff, but your guess is as good as anyone's (i.e., I don't think anyone can say one way or the other with any certainty whatsoever).

I don't think so. It's completely free and open. If they really didn't want bots, they could make it private. Or if they wanted to make money off of it, they could make it paid. But they aren't doing anything like that.

What I have noticed is that instead of having one API call that returns a massive amount of data, they have a bunch of API calls that return smaller amounts of data. I think this is to reduce load on their servers. Philosophically, I actually think this is a good thing for them to do. It just kinda screws people who consume their API.