The Effect of Back-to-Back Games in the NHL: Top Shelf or Garbage Goal?

• Activity Number: 482
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 4, 2010 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Sports
• Author(s): Michael A. Rutter*+
• Companies: Penn State Erie, The Behrend College
• Keywords: Sports ; Hockey ; Bayesian ; Ranking

Abstract

Conventional wisdom in the National Hockey League (NHL) is that when a team plays games back to back, they perform at a lower level than normal due to fatigue. One area of concern is the fact that not all NHL teams play the same number of back to back games. For example, in the 2008-09 season, the Columbus Blue Jackets played 20 back to back to games while the Colorado Avalanche only played eight. If teams are truly affected when playing back to back games, the imbalance could have an effect on which teams make the Stanley Cup playoffs. This paper attempts to estimate the effect of NHL teams playing back to back games on the probability of winning or tying the game, taking into the account of the quality of the opponent using a modified Thurstone-Mosteller model. The ramifications of eliminating back to back games can then be examined in terms of playoff seeding.