It really depends on what's happening. If the Bob The Fighter says, "Gods damn it, I'm sick of the little bastards! I swing my sword in a wide arc to take out as many of them as I can," well, then I'd say his attack is going to hit more than a few of them with that 9 damage, at least as many as are in front of him. On the other hand, if I say to him first, "So Bob, you're enjoying being in the middle of this fray, but looks like while the rest of them are just plain harrying you, the tattooed one on your left has a sharp knife dripping with poison jabbing toward your kidney. You like your kidney, right?" and he says "Well to hell with him! Sword, head," well, then I say his damage effects just the one. Start and end with the fiction there.
The bigger and more subtle part of what I'm saying there is that I don't think it's enough for Bob to just say, "I attack the goblins! *rolls dice*," because saying that doesn't give me enough information to say who or what's going to take the damage, outside of "goblins". If I ask him, "Cool, how," and he says, "Screw it, I don't care, I'm just swinging like mad," well, then I know. Just make sure to get enough of an answer that you can all be clear on what's happening so that the result isn't weird.