NHL Playoffs 2012: Home-Ice Advantage Has Returned, Likely To Stay

Home teams were a bewildering 18-30 over the first round of the 2012 Stanley Cup playoffs. Entering Saturday night’s Game 7 of the New York Rangers-Washington Capitals series, they have aggregated a 13-7 run in the second round.

That didn’t take long, did it?

Of the three teams who have already stamped their passports to the conference finals, the New Jersey Devils are 4-1 at home, the Los Angeles Kings are 3-1 and the Phoenix Coyotes are 4-2.

Each of them went undefeated at their own arenas in their respective destruction of the Philadelphia Flyers, St. Louis Blues and Nashville Predators.

If the Rangers bow out at Madison Square Garden on Saturday, they will finish their 2012 playoff run at 4-4 in their own abode. In turn, the only non-conference finalist to have finished with a winning record at home will be the 3-2 Predators.

Otherwise, if the top-dog Blueshirts survive Washington’s bid for another upset, they will have taken three of four home playoff bouts with the Capitals after splitting four with the Senators.

Regardless of Saturday’s outcome, each conference semifinal series is already guaranteed a .500 record for home teams or better. The Caps are 3-3 in six playoff openings at the Verizon Center, having lost two of three to Boston and won two of three against New York.

Will this reversal carry any implications for the second half of the second season? Will the seventh player’s role increase in importance?

Don’t doubt that potentiality.

All four of the conference finalists and their respective fanbases will be relatively, if not entirely new to the NHL’s final four. In every city, the atmospheric sense of novelty and excitement could be forging a symbiotic relationship with the on-ice success that generates it.

No core group of players and coaching staffs on the five remaining teams have reached this point together. The franchise with the freshest memories of a venture to the conference finals are the Devils, who did it in another building in another part of the state a year before the lockout.

The Manhattan masses who will urge on the Rangers on Saturday are hoping their team reaches the third round for the first time since 1997. Washington has waited only one year fewer for this.

Los Angeles has to go back to 1993 to recount its last taste of the Campbell Bowl championship series. Phoenix is hosting the opener and, if need be, will host the seventh game of its first ever Stanley Cup semifinal.

If any of these teams needed to struggle in front of their friendly crowds at any point, they all got it out of the way and recovered at the best possible time.

The Devils entered this season, their fifth in the Prudential Center, never having won a playoff series out of three tries—including two with home-ice advantage—since their last season at Continental Airlines Arena in 2007.

But since trailing the third-seeded Florida Panthers 2-1 in this year’s conference quarterfinals, they have gone 4-0 in Newark. Although they will be 5-3 on the road in these playoffs, the Capitals could be a gift of an adversary in the battle for the Prince of Wales Trophy simply for the seeding differential.

Conversely, if the Rangers prevail, they will have their own four-game home winning streak to ride into the third round, which would commence and potentially climax at the Garden.

The Kings and Coyotes each subsisted primarily on road success in the first round, but swept their home dates in the conference semifinals. And for what it’s worth, Phoenix’s two home losses to Chicago required overtime, as did the Coyotes’ Game 1 victories over the Blackhawks and Nashville.

It may be mere trivia, but it certainly cannot be disconcerting to know that the Coyotes have finally learned to polish off the opposition in regulation, which they did in Game 2 and the Game 5 clincher against the visiting Predators.

There is always the possibility this could take another sharp U-turn back in the direction of the first round. But dismissing home-ice advantage for the balance of the playoffs will be a risky bet.

Consider the home records of the last six Stanley Cup finalists within the final two rounds: Pittsburgh was 5-0 and Detroit 6-1 in 2009, Chicago went 5-0 and Philadelphia 5-1 in 2010 and Boston and Vancouver were both 6-1 in 2011.

One word of caution, though. Three of those four home shortcomings constitute each of the last three cup-clinching games. But we’ll step on that sheet when the Zamboni leaves it for us.