The topic of competitive integrity has become a hot topic in the National Hockey League for some time now. So far, the focus has generally been on the advantage that teams from states without state taxes have over their competitors, but that’s not the only competitive difference affecting teams in the league.
Recently, Thomas Nestico, who can be found @tjstats on Xtook the time to analyze the impact each NHL team will have on its travel schedule next season.
I’m sure all of us who have ever flown will agree that more travel can and will directly lead to increased fatigue and issues like jet lag, and by extension, it probably means that teams that travel less will be more rested throughout the season and thus have a competitive advantage. Well, in some cases, the travel gaps are truly enormous, with the Dallas Stars (the team that will travel the most next season) for example having to travel almost twice as much as the Pittsburgh Penguins (the team that will travel the least next season).
To my knowledge, there is no way to truly measure how much of an advantage this will be to teams at the bottom of the seeding or how much of a disadvantage this will be to teams at the top of the seeding. I’ll let you be the judge of that, but you can see the full breakdown of each NHL team’s travel relative to their opponents in the image below, courtesy of Thomas Nestico.
