Wednesday, December 13, 2006
A Tale of Two Leagues, cont'd.
Tom Benjamin, among many many others, has noted that it's almost like the two conferences are playing different games -- among other bits of evidence, it's rather stunning that 24 of the NHL's Top 30 scorers come from the East.
It would be unwise to overstate things (the average EC team outscores the average WC team by ~0.25 G/gm), but roughly speaking, the West seems to be tighter checking with most of the league's best goalies, while the East seems more wide open with most of the league's sieves (apologies to Cloutier and Joseph).
Along these lines, inspired by a comment by Roger Millions(!), I took a look at some other stats, and found a difference between the two conferences that is sufficiently large that I assume it's a fluke.
Home-ice advantage in the NHL has been relatively consistent over time. Naturally adjustments need to be made re: the shootout and the loser-point, but so far this season (prior to last night's games), the overall numbers are right in line.
By division, home-ice advantage is ranked like so:
I don't know what the explanation for such a huge discrepancy here is, or even if that explanation would be interesting. I just thought I'd point it out. As you were.
It would be unwise to overstate things (the average EC team outscores the average WC team by ~0.25 G/gm), but roughly speaking, the West seems to be tighter checking with most of the league's best goalies, while the East seems more wide open with most of the league's sieves (apologies to Cloutier and Joseph).
Along these lines, inspired by a comment by Roger Millions(!), I took a look at some other stats, and found a difference between the two conferences that is sufficiently large that I assume it's a fluke.
Home-ice advantage in the NHL has been relatively consistent over time. Naturally adjustments need to be made re: the shootout and the loser-point, but so far this season (prior to last night's games), the overall numbers are right in line.
- The average team in the average game will earn 55.4% of the available points, or about 1.11pts/gm (to be clear, these are the figures that would be 50%/1.00 if there were no 3-point games).
- The home team will earn about 1.20pts/gm, and the road team will earn about 1.01pts/gm
- So, the average team will earn about 18.7% more points at home than on the road, aka the home ice advantage is 18.7%
- Eastern Conference home-ice advantage = 3.6%
- Western Conference home-ice advantage = 36.7%
By division, home-ice advantage is ranked like so:
- Northwest: 60.9%
- Pacific: 33.3%
- Central: 16.8%
- Southeast: 9.3%
- Atlantic: 9.1%
- Northeast: -5.6%
I don't know what the explanation for such a huge discrepancy here is, or even if that explanation would be interesting. I just thought I'd point it out. As you were.
# posted by Matt @ 12:25 pm 
Comments:
I've been intending to write this exact post for about a week. I'm at work so much, it's all I can do to crank out the odd thing with a bunch of wrong names for people.
It's weird though. I've also noticed that it seems like when the Oilers are at home, they get three days between games and when they hit the road, it's B2B or 3/4 days time. I'm wondering if that's a WC thing, done to cut travel costs or something.
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I've been intending to write this exact post for about a week. I'm at work so much, it's all I can do to crank out the odd thing with a bunch of wrong names for people.
It's weird though. I've also noticed that it seems like when the Oilers are at home, they get three days between games and when they hit the road, it's B2B or 3/4 days time. I'm wondering if that's a WC thing, done to cut travel costs or something.
# posted by 
: December 13, 2006 1:48 pm
: December 13, 2006 1:48 pm Post a Comment
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