With the release of the 2009-10 NHL Regular Season schedule, a favorite summer pasttime of hockey fans (and some team officials) in many cities is about to commence; whining about the burdens of travel, and how the NHL office has the fix in to screw team XYZ out of a successful campaign. Either there are too many long trips, or too many short trips, or too many time zone changes... it seems like just about any aspect of the schedule is picked on as especially painful.
Over the course of the season, however, which teams truly travel more than the others, and which ones play the most games on back-to-back nights? For the answer to those and other questions, I'd like to share with you the 2009-10 NHL Super Schedule, a freely available spreadsheet that I publish, which includes travel distances between each NHL game, days elapsed since the previous game, etc.
Follow after the jump for a look at the spreadsheet, and an overview of travel and back-to-back totals by team...
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I'll put the summary right up here at the top. We've got year-to-year comparisons of total travel miles (measured as the crow files from one NHL arena to the next), and the number of back-to-back games that are on each team's schedule. Teams with low mileage and back-to-backs are shaded green, and the harsher numbers are shaded pink:
| Team | 2008-9 Miles | 2009-10 Miles | Diff | 2008-9 B2B | 2009-10 B2B | Diff |
| Anaheim Ducks | 47910 | 49068 | +1158 | 18 | 17 | -1 |
| Atlanta Thrashers | 42172 | 37768 | -4404 | 15 | 16 | +1 |
| Boston Bruins | 30865 | 34969 | +4104 | 16 | 17 | +1 |
| Buffalo Sabres | 30542 | 25911 | -4631 | 17 | 18 | +1 |
| Calgary Flames | 52941 | 55331 | +2390 | 14 | 14 | 0 |
| Carolina Hurricanes | 37958 | 38360 | +402 | 14 | 16 | +2 |
| Chicago Blackhawks | 38557 | 43417 | +4860 | 16 | 19 | +3 |
| Colorado Avalanche | 47889 | 43405 | -4484 | 8 | 16 | +8 |
| Columbus Blue Jackets | 41305 | 40410 | -895 | 20 | 12 | -8 |
| Dallas Stars | 51541 | 51182 | -359 | 15 | 12 | -3 |
| Detroit Red Wings | 39642 | 42477 | +2835 | 16 | 13 | -3 |
| Edmonton Oilers | 49941 | 49191 | -750 | 16 | 11 | -5 |
| Florida Panthers | 44178 | 47873 | +3695 | 12 | 18 | +6 |
| Los Angeles Kings | 44917 | 45682 | +765 | 15 | 12 | -3 |
| Minnesota Wild | 44083 | 43599 | -484 | 17 | 15 | -2 |
| Montreal Canadiens | 32128 | 38029 | +5901 | 13 | 16 | +3 |
| Nashville Predators | 40958 | 39749 | -1209 | 13 | 15 | +2 |
| New Jersey Devils | 29289 | 31340 | +2051 | 18 | 19 | +1 |
| New York Islanders | 28126 | 31550 | +3424 | 17 | 19 | +2 |
| New York Rangers | 34603 | 33615 | -988 | 15 | 13 | -2 |
| Ottawa Senators | 31828 | 34338 | +2510 | 16 | 11 | -5 |
| Philadelphia Flyers | 29510 | 29087 | -437 | 18 | 16 | -2 |
| Phoenix Coyotes | 51233 | 49707 | -1526 | 16 | 13 | -3 |
| Pittsburgh Penguins | 32277 | 29691 | -2586 | 13 | 16 | +3 |
| San Jose Sharks | 56111 | 46415 | -9696 | 14 | 13 | -1 |
| St. Louis Blues | 41248 | 44971 | +3723 | 19 | 18 | -1 |
| Tampa Bay Lightning | 45812 | 37722 | -8090 | 16 | 12 | -4 |
| Toronto Maple Leafs | 33240 | 32313 | -927 | 13 | 18 | +5 |
| Vancouver Canucks | 51206 | 48221 | -2985 | 11 | 14 | +3 |
| Washington Capitals | 28321 | 33561 | +5240 | 13 | 13 | 0 |
| Average | 40344 | 40782 | 15.1 | 15.1 |
UPDATE: Corrections made to some teams (Vancouver, Washington, etc.) which have road games on both sides of the Olympic break. Also corrected for teams that went to Europe last year, but those travel miles carried over into the first run of this spreadsheet.
A few notes to consider:
- The NHL schedule makers should be given credit for not increasing the number of back-to-backs, given the Olympic Break which has to be wedged into the same overall timetable. How'd they do this? Well, there are many more games on the total schedule which have one day off in between (1,359 in the upcoming season, as opposed to 1,250 last year). Just as games after 1 day off have gone up, games after 2, 3, or 4 days off have gone down by a similar amount (682 to 581). So basically the NHL took those longer breaks and compressed down quite a bit, while avoiding a rash of back-to-backs. Kudos to them on that score.
- We also see a bit less variance in the number of back-to-backs. Last season, Colorado had just 8 while Columbus had 20, while this year the gap runs from 11 to 19.
- In terms of mileage, it looks like Mike Gillis was successful in lobbying the NHL for relief for his Vancouver Canucks, as they saw a significant reduction in their travel mileage.
The obvious question then is, which team has the hardest or easiest road to travel in the 2009-10 Regular Season? Is it Calgary based on pure mileage, or Chicago which has plenty of flying time, but also the most back-to-backs?
At least now, if you're going to complain about your favorite team's schedule, at least you can do so in an informed manner!
Below is a brief sample of what the spreadsheet looks like. You can access the 2009-10 Google Spreadsheet on your own and download a copy to work with as you wish. There's also the 2008-9 Super Schedule, and the 2007-8 Super Schedule, also via Google Docs, if you wish to run year-to-year comparisons. When you follow the links, you'll get all the columns, which include mileage along with strength of schedule information (various stats for the opponent in a given game).
Also, if you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments, email me (the.forechecker @ gmail.com) or catch me on Twitter (@Forechecker).