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Travel Point Losses For Western Teams
by PuckStopsHere on 04/04/09 at 02:15 AM ET
Comments (6)
While looking at the relative divisional strengths this season, I mentioned that the Central Division is helped by travel. While West Conference teams lead the league in distance travelled in a season, they are the further west teams in the conference. This allows the Central Division teams to play a lot of games against travel tired teams. This is something that has been well-established in some work by Tom Benjamin that was done in the 1990s. Most of it is no longer available on the internet. Some readers here (particularly Hockey in HD) had not seen this work and were skeptical.
I cannot re-create all of this work in a short period of time. In order to show how travel does affect the westernmost teams and get a rough estimate of how many points it costs them in a season, I did some work. There is a lot more evidence that can be presented, but it will probably have to wait until the off-season.
I claim that Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, San Jose, Los Angeles and Anaheim are the most travel hurt teams in the NHL. Travel hurts most in the regular season. During the playoffs (should a team make them), the opponent in a given round must travel the same distance as the westernmost team. There is no short-term difference in travel. It is possible that a longer-term difference may exist. For example a player with recurring injuries might be in better shape had he not spent so much time in the season travelling. For the sake of this study we will assume that is negligible.
I will show that Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, San Jose, Los Angles and Anaheim have historically performed worse in the regular season relative to the rest of the league than they have in the playoffs. They have done so by a statistically significant margin. The best explanation to explain this difference is that the regular season under-performance is due to travel.
Theses six team’s cumulative records in seasons where they qualified for the playoffs (and treating regulation tie points as losses worth zero points) are 8157 games played. They have 3689 wins, 3169 losses and 999 ties. This is a .513 winning percentage. Since it only includes seasons where the team qualified for the playoffs it is logical to be above .500. The worst versions of these teams (the ones that missed the playoffs) are not included.
During the playoffs in this period of time, these six teams have a record of 481-490 in 971 games played. This is a .495 winning percentage. To be completely average, one would expect a .500 record (as each playoff game has a winner and a loser giving a net .500 record). This group of teams does not quite measure up. In almost 1000 games, they fall nine games short of .500. That is a small enough margin that it might be attributed to luck or possibly the remaining travel issues. We won’t worry about it for our purposes.
We can compare to the average playoff team during this period. The earliest of the six westernmost teams joined the NHL in the 1967 expansion the Los Angeles Kings). So I computed the average winning percentage for a team that makes the playoffs since 1967/68 (again assuming regulation tie points are worth zero). The average playoff team in this period has a .557 winning percentage. The westernmost teams fall well below average, despite being very close to average in the playoffs.
The westernmost teams get 92% as many regular season points in playoff seasons than the rest of the league does, while winning 99% as many playoff games as the rest of the league does. That regular season drop is significant. It is about 650 games played. 650 out of a little over 8000 games is a significant fraction.
The most reasonable explanation for this drop (the only one I can see at this point) is travel. The westernmost teams perform about 7.5% worse in the regular season relative to the league then they do in the playoffs. The main factor that changes from regular season to playoffs is the drop in relative travel discrepancies.
In an 82 game season, a 7.5% drop in points is about 6 points. We can say on average each of these six westernmost teams loses about six points a season due to travel. In order to obtain a statistically significant number, we averaged many seasons. These seasons are different in nature. In some years the schedule is more balanced than others. In other years there are more western teams than others. So the six point figure cannot be taken as absolute, but it is a good guess for what is lost due to travel by the westernmost teams.
I considered the regulation tie point to worth zero points in order to compare across eras. This isn’t true in today’s NHL. The average playoff-bound team gets a regulation tie point less than 10% of the time (teams that lose a lot get more of these points but they are for the most part not playoff teams). This will reduce our 6 point drop by around half a point making it an average 5.5 point drop.
Now these 5.5 points are lost by six teams. This means about 33 points are available to be won by the rest of the league. This is the benefit drop travel inequities. Who benefits varies from season to season, due to scheduling etc. It is harder to track who benefits than it is to track who loses (since they are largely the same teams each season), so I will not do that today.
I will say that the extra points must go to opponents of one of the westernmost teams. They cannot go to the other westernmost teams who are also losing points (or else they have still not been accounted for). That leaves nine teams within the conference that might get these points. Some of them might also have travel issues (the rest of the Northwest and Pacific Division teams that are less isolated from the rest of the league) and there is the Central Division and the East Conference. These westernmost teams play 18 games each versus East Conference teams this season. They play 20 games each versus Central Division teams. There is more opportunity for a Central Division team to benefit when compared to a give East Conference division (who average six games against a westernmost team this year). It stands to reason that the Central Division gets more than their share of the points the westernmost teams lose to travel.
So if we look again at the divisional point totals:
Central Division 459
Northeast Division 438
Atlantic Division 434
Pacific Division 425
Southeast Division 421
Northwest Division 416
We will attempt to correct for travel issues. Let’s add 5 points for each of the six westernmost teams to the Northwest and Pacific Divisions. That is thirty extra points. We will subtract those thirty extra points from the rest of the league. Half of it goes to the Central Division and half goes to the East Conference (that scales roughly with games played). Each East Conference Division loses 5 points and the Central loses 15.
That makes a travel adjusted divisonal point total which looks like this:
Central Division 444
Pacific Division 440
Northeast Division 433
Northwest Division 431
Atlantic Division 429
Southeast Division 416
Of course these numbers are approximate, but I think they are much more accurate than the unadjusted numbers to show relative divisional quality. The West Conference supremacy (which is clearly shown in the East vs. West record) is much more obvious. The difference between the best and worst division is reduced - which is likely more in line with reality. The Central Division still leads the pack, but they are essentially tied by the Pacific Division. I think that is a reasonable result.
On a team level, if we add 5 points to the six westernmost teams, Anaheim is clearly a playoff team - as opposed to one that is still fighting for a final berth. Edmonton would probably be a playoff team as well. These westernmost teams have a significant drop in the standings that can affect them in meaningful ways.
Travel is a significant issue in the NHL. It affects the westernmost teams more than it does the rest of the league. Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Anaheim, San Jose and Los Angeles are taken as the most hurt teams in this study. On average these teams have lost 6.5 points per year as a result of their increased travel. These points have boosted the rest of the league - with the Central Division benefitting the most as their most common opponent. This is strong evidence that this effect exists. It is well known in some hockey circles, but rarely mentioned by the mainstream media and often scoffed at by skeptical hockey fans.
Filed in: | The Puck Stops Here | Permalink
Tags: Anaheim+Ducks, Calgary+Flames, Edmonton+Oilers, Los+Angeles+Kings, San+Jose+Sharks, travel, Vancouver+Canucks,
Comments
Clearly matter transport would solve all these problems.
Posted by Mojo Tooth on 04/04/09 at 12:19 PM ET
The logical next question is what can be done about this?
The solution is not that hard and the league will be setting the schedule differently next year, at least for Vacouver. Gillis hired somebody to do a study this year and the result was an accurate prediction - the Canucks tanked this year exactly when the group predicted they would. Apparently Bettman et al were convinced.
Next year, Vancouver’s schedule will be set first giving them the easiest possible schedule. (No word on whether the league will completely embrace this idea, one I suggested ten years ago. After Vancouver is set, the California schedules should be slotted in. Then Alberta. Finally, the rest of the league.
It won’t eliminate the problem but it will minimise it.
Posted by Tom Benjamin on 04/04/09 at 01:31 PM ET
PuckStops, you say, “The main factor that changes from regular season to playoffs is the drop in relative travel discrepancies.”
This is what grounds your argument, and I see no support for this claim. It’s true that relative travel discrepancies (RTD) changes from regular season to playoffs; but is it true that this is the *main factor*? Now, for clarity, I assume you mean that the change in RTD is the main factor for the six most traveled teams during the regular season.
But consider other changes that occur, in general (i.e. for all teams), from regular season to playoffs: refereeing and style of play. These are absolutely and without a doubt two huge factors that change between regular season and playoffs. The question is, do they differentially affect the 6 most traveled teams. That is, could regular season to playoff changes refereeing and style of play account for the differences in win percentage that you attribute to regular reason to playoff changes in RTD? At the very least, it’s arguable. Several of the teams you mention are teams that are considered very good playoff teams (e.g. Edmonton and Calgary). We all know, for example, that Calgary’s game benefits hugely by the changed style of play and refereeing that we see in the playoffs. So, the difference between regular season and playoffs for these 6 teams could just be accounted for by the fact that they happen to have teams that differentially benefit from factors *other than changes in RTD* that we see in playoffs.
RTD may be not be the main factor that changes between regular season and playoffs which affects the 6 most traveled teams more than the rest of the teams in the league—because the 6 most traveled teams might also have other properties aside from being the most traveled (like being teams built or the playoffs) that results in other factors affecting their playoff performances.
Posted by Brad from Iowa City, IA on 04/12/09 at 09:24 AM ET
Although I have not presented it here (yet) there is lots of further evidence for travel costing these teams points.
It is very odd that one could argue that a group of teams that lose more games than they win in the playoffs are in fact built for the playoffs.
I don’t have the numbers in front of me right now, but one could exclude the Alberta teams and not significantly change the results. The teams still would do worse in the regular season relative to the average playoff team than they do in the playoffs. Would you then argue that Los Angeles, San Jose, Anaheim, Vancouver and their one combined Stanley Cup is because they are “built for the playoffs”? Give me a few hours to get to my notes and I will post those numbers. They do not do a good job of supporting your hypothesis.
Posted by PuckStopsHere on 04/12/09 at 09:43 AM ET
East-to-west travel is not the same as west-to-east travel, so your assumption that both teams in a playoff round are equally travel disadvantaged is unjustified. It’s possible that those six teams benefit from travel in the playoffs, making their playoff records better than they would be otherwise.
There are also issues that come from including too many games. For instance, an Anaheim-Edmonton playoff series clearly just distorts these results and pulls those six teams’ playoff winning percentage closer to .500 than it otherwise would be. This is a very significant issue in seasons where the playoffs were seeded by division. Since Edmonton, Vancouver, Calgary, and Los Angeles were all in the Smythe division (with Colorado), four of those teams would make the playoffs each year, and all the games between each other bring their historical combined playoff record closer to .500 than it otherwise would be.
I suspect something similar may be happening from including too many regular season games, but I’m not sure yet.
Late comment, I know, but I just got a chance to read this.
Posted by Ryan from Toronto on 04/12/09 at 09:51 AM ET
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The logical next question is what can be done about this?
From the point of view of an individual team, are they using private jets with sleeper seats & special diets?
Perhaps most of the travel should be in the early season, and end-of-season games should be local games, rather than cross-country games.
Maybe teams should come into town for 4 days and play 2 games. That might cut the travel in half.
Posted by w2j2 on 04/04/09 at 02:56 AM ET