NHL Travelogue: How Geography Affects a Team's Success

In hockey, and in all sports, there is a fair amount of luck that goes into every game. 

Sometimes it’s the chance bounce or bad call that ultimately wins a match.  Is that fair? 

Perhaps not, but fortune often evens out in the end.

And regardless of the justice in luck, it is inevitable—especially in a fast paced game with so many things happening at once.

Luck on the ice is bound to influence the outcome of some games, but what about luck outside the rink? 

One important factor that is often overlooked is a city's geographical location.  

Away games mean travel, and teams whose divisional opponents are only a short distance away—such as the teams in the Atlantic Division—are at an advantage.  Teams in the Northwest Division, however, must often make those long, exhausting, detrimental road trips.
 
Each team plays every other team in its division eight times.  That means that of the 82 games a team plays in a season, 32 are against the other clubs in its division.  If you are lucky enough to be in a division whose teams are all located in a very consolidated area, your idea of a road trip is an hour long bus ride, or maybe you’d even drive yourself.

The Rangers, Islanders, and Devils are just a bridge away from each other.  Pittsburgh and Philly are also exceptionally close.

This means that, from a travel perspective, those teams essentially get an extra 32 home games.  After an "away" game they head right back home instead of spending the night in a hotel—or worse, on a plane.

Should this be seen as an inevitable advantage?  If you're lucky enough to be on one of those teams, you benefit from a lot more rest as the season winds down, and you have that upper edge on the teams outside of your division.

Can nothing be done to even things out?  It's actually not too hard to rectify the problem.  Just alter divisions so that they are not based on geography.  This way, every team would travel an equal amount.  

But there are a few arguments against this proposal.  For one, you’d lose the divisional rivalries.

Okay, but divisional rivalries came to be because the same teams played each other so often.  A newly composed division would simply mean new rivalries.  And since you'd be playing your old rivals less often, the significance of those games would actually be amplified.  You’d know you wouldn’t just be able to bounce back from a defeat by playing that old rival next week.

Another argument against reformatting divisions?  The new CBA already modified the schedule to increase play within divisions in order to reduce travel costs.

But look at it this way: One of the main goals of the new CBA was to create more equality between teams.  That's why a salary cap and revenue sharing were implemented.  The current schedule allows some teams the unfair advantage of playing many games near their homes, and therefore goes against one of the CBA's main points.  The current schedule does not support equality.

The NFL and MLB don't classify conferences geographically, which is easily noticeable, as the two New York teams aren't in the same conference in either league.  If the NHL were to scramble the divisional team classifications, travel costs and fatigue would even out for everyone.  

Luck is an inevitable factor in any sport, but it should be limited to the rink, the playing field, what have you.  The league's coordination should be as small a factor as possible in any game's outcome.