Thursday, August 13, 2009

Three Stars - Part 4 - Road Losers

Losing on the road is not unusual in the NHL. Out of the 1230 NHL games in 2008-09, the road team won just 543 for a winning percentage of about 44%.

When you lose on the road, you need to be prepared to get no respect from the media in the arena where you're playing. Some teams, however, get more respect than others. Here's the chart showing the number of players, by team, that was named one of the Three Stars when their team lost on road.

Take special notice of the Kings and Lightning near the top - these were not good teams last year, yet they earned notice more frequently than some more talented team. Did they play better road games?

The Sharks were tops, which makes me think they engender respect (even grudging respect) when they play on the road.

The team with the least respect? That would be your Toronto Maple Leafs, followed closely by the Thrashers and Senators.

I'd be interested to see how goal differential played into this (ie, you would think the teams at the top would have played closer games on the road), but I'm a bit too lazy to figure that out right now.


Road Stars Road Losses Road Ratio
Sharks 11 20 0.55
Kings 12 25 0.48
Flyers 10 21 0.48
Oilers 10 21 0.48
Ducks 9 19 0.47
Lightning 13 29 0.45
Blue Jackets 11 25 0.44
Rangers 10 24 0.42
Red Wings 7 17 0.41
Capitals 8 20 0.40
Penguins 8 21 0.38
Wild 9 24 0.38
Hurricanes 8 22 0.36
Panthers 8 22 0.36
Predators 9 25 0.36
Stars 9 25 0.36
Islanders 11 31 0.35
Bruins 6 17 0.35
Canucks 7 20 0.35
Sabres 8 23 0.35
Flames 7 22 0.32
Blues 7 23 0.30
Avalanche 8 27 0.30
Coyotes 8 28 0.29
Devils 5 18 0.28
Blackhawks 5 19 0.26
Canadiens 6 24 0.25
Senators 6 27 0.22
Thrashers 6 29 0.21
Maple Leafs 4 23 0.17

1 comment:

ppirilla said...

Take special notice of the Kings and Lightning near the top - these were not good teams last year, yet they earned notice more frequently than some more talented team. Did they play better road games?

This makes me wonder who is getting the star. I admit to barely seeing either team in action, but a statistic like this leads me to believe that there was a player who should have stolen the game, but the rest of the team was so bad that they still gave it away.

Further things to ponder and numbers to crunch, I suppose...