Came across this breakdown of how far each NHL team will travel this season and thought it was pretty interesting.

The Oilers top the list at over 54k miles, while the Islanders are at the bottom with under 29k. Total league-wide travel is over 1.3 million miles across 1,051 time zones.

Makes me wonder how much do you think travel actually impacts team performance in the NHL? Like in the NFL, it’s pretty well-documented that west coast teams flying east can struggle. Curious if hockey is anywhere close to similar.

16 comments

  2. A lot of these I get the travel distance, but… Pittsburgh?? What kind of crap schedule did they get that has them traveling that much?

    Everyone really must want them to run themselves into the ground so they can get McKenna, huh

    EDIT: I have been reminded that I’m an idiot and I forgot the Global Series exists. My bad lol

  3. I mean it can depending on back to backs, how long it takes, long road swings or short. Long homestead as well. NFL shouldn’t struggle that much tbh they dont usually play multiple games a week like nba or nhl. So it more or less attitudes, game planing turff, home ground , and few other factors that effect a team more. Thrn travel.

  4. I feel like the western conference always has the toughest schedule with time zones and distance of road trips. Why is Pittsburgh so high compared to other teams on the east coast?

  6. Hmm interesting. Doesn’t matter how far the bruins travel this season, they can never seem to get out of their own way. 🥴

  7. Seems to show that a lighter travel schedule doesn’t always translate into success

  11. Odd that Dallas, which is south of the mid point of the US (some town in Kansas, had to look that shit up) has so much more travel. Even more odd, that both Winter Classic games are in the state of Florida.

  12. That shit is insane if this is accurate. Islanders are set to travel a whopping 20,000+ less miles than the top 4 teams.

  14. New rule: Divisions change to ensure each team travels the same distance per season +/- 2,000 miles. Think of how interesting it would be to welcome a couple new teams to your barn more often!

  15. Islanders:

    – 7 game road-trip November 8-20 (first 2 games are at NYR/NJ), followed by a 7 game homestand November 22-December 4

    – Second 7 game road-trip January 8-21

    – After the Olympic break, 9 out of 12 games on the road followed by 10 out of 12 games at home to end the season

    – Only 10 out of 41 away games are “one-offs”, meaning only 10 times traveling away from home for a single game before returning home. One of those games is the Rangers and another is the Devils, so only 8 of them are flights

    – Tied-most back-to-backs (16)

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