Can the Home-Ice Advantage be Measured Statistically?

[MadLuke]

In my opinion this is all about succes.

Teams like CBJ, NYI, MIN, TBL who where bad for a lot of years, have problems to win on the road, while good teams like Boston, Philly, Detroit, SJS, NYR know how to win on the road

TBL was very front loaded in 3 superstars for a while, it was one of the team the most influenced by the the first line IMO.

Could by the same for the jacket, islanders, min for a while too, a big step from the stars and the rest of the team.

 

[Patman]

I take it, as a personal rule of thumb using a Poisson model (see Robin Lock's CHODR... which is one flavor... he negates OT and ENGs) that home ice is worth about +/-5%... that is 5% to this more on offense... 5% less on defense. If you figure about 3 goals a game each way this means a goal in your favor roughly every 3.5 games.

Home ice is relatively weak in hockey. Feel free to investigate it more. Also, when trying to do "team by team" comparisons please note, like a lot of these investigations, is that statistical power is weak and your mileage may vary. You would think crowds, home cooking, and last change and the rest would affect this more but the plain reality is that it doesn't. Go figure. I suppose once you get in the 200x85 its mostly between the ears... but hockey being a very much "last mile, last step" type sport. Eh.

Its been awhile since I've looked on this on NHL data... but the results are usually within the same ballpark.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Home Faceoff Percentage

I was thinking about researching this and decided it might be best to check and see if anyone else already has.

Faceoffs are one of the very few quantifiable aspects of home-ice advantage. In theory, all players should be better at taking faceoffs in home games since the rules disadvantage the visiting centermen. Does this theoretical advantage translate to a real difference in the numbers? If so, how much of an advantage is it?

 

[seventieslord]

I was thinking about researching this and decided it might be best to check and see if anyone else already has.

Faceoffs are one of the very few quantifiable aspects of home-ice advantage. In theory, all players should be better at taking faceoffs in home games since the rules disadvantage the visiting centermen. Does this theoretical advantage translate to a real difference in the numbers? If so, how much of an advantage is it?

I have heard that it does. I forget how much though.

 

[Mathletic]

with replacement refrees doing a fairly poor job in the NFL, I think it gives more credibility to the thesis that a good bunch of home-ice advantage relies on refrees. This year in the NFL, there's about as many penalties given per game compared to the same point in the schedule last year. However, more calls are given against the road team leading to most point spreads being covered by the home team so far this year. Still not a huge number of games played but still.

This idea was exposed in that book. Haven't read it though.

http://www.amazon.ca/Scorecasting-H...1794/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348286652&sr=8-1

 

[ponder]

I've always expected that Colorado would have a higher home-ice advantage than they do (because of the altitude).

The arena is at what, 1600 m? That's really not that high. I've done plenty of hiking trips at fairly high altitudes, including a number of hikes in Peru and Bolivia at 4000-5000 m, and in my opinion I don't start to feel short of breath more quickly than normal until around 2000-2500 m. Even then we're talking about very slight differences, the real "hey, why am I getting winded so quickly" stuff starts hitting me more at more like 3000 m. At 1600 m the effect is probably barely noticeable at all for NHLers.

 

[Strong Island]

The arena is at what, 1600 m? That's really not that high. I've done plenty of hiking trips at fairly high altitudes, including a number of hikes in Peru and Bolivia at 4000-5000 m, and in my opinion I don't start to feel short of breath more quickly than normal until around 2000-2500 m. Even then we're talking about very slight differences, the real "hey, why am I getting winded so quickly" stuff starts hitting me more at more like 3000 m. At 1600 m the effect is probably barely noticeable at all for NHLers.

I think it's a much bigger deal than you are making it out to be. I remember seeing some players use oxygen in between periods/shifts when visiting Colorado.

 

[Feed Me A Stray Cat]

It would be interesting to understand the travel dynamic on actual performance.

One thing I noticed was that the better home ice teams were predominantly located in the South/West. Not sure if its relevant.

 

[Mathletic]

In case anyone is interested in buying the article

Variations in Home Advantage: Evidence from the National Hockey League

Doyle, Joanne M. / Leard, Benjamin

http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jqas.2012.8.issue-2/1559-0410.1446/1559-0410.1446.xml?format=INT

We study two important aspects of the home advantage for ice hockey. First we study team and season level data to uncover systematic variation in the home advantage across teams and over time. We find no systematic variation in home advantage across teams. Secondly, we use six seasons of game-level data to uncover sources of the home advantage. Our results show that additional rest for the home team has no impact on the win-loss probability. We find evidence that the home team̢۪s rule advantage with regard to stick placement during face-offs helps to explain the home advantage, but that the home team̢۪s rule advantage with regard to last line change opportunity does not. We find that the home advantage varies over the progression of the season, being the highest at the beginning and end of the season, and very small in the middle of the season. We also find that the home advantage is larger at the end of the season when the two teams are high in the standings. Some of these results are consistent with referee bias, but we are unable to show a causal relationship between referee bias and these results.

 

[Master_Of_Districts]

In case anyone is interested in buying the article

Variations in Home Advantage: Evidence from the National Hockey League

Doyle, Joanne M. / Leard, Benjamin

http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jqas.2012.8.issue-2/1559-0410.1446/1559-0410.1446.xml?format=INT

We study two important aspects of the home advantage for ice hockey. First we study team and season level data to uncover systematic variation in the home advantage across teams and over time. We find no systematic variation in home advantage across teams. Secondly, we use six seasons of game-level data to uncover sources of the home advantage. Our results show that additional rest for the home team has no impact on the win-loss probability. We find evidence that the home team’s rule advantage with regard to stick placement during face-offs helps to explain the home advantage, but that the home team’s rule advantage with regard to last line change opportunity does not. We find that the home advantage varies over the progression of the season, being the highest at the beginning and end of the season, and very small in the middle of the season. We also find that the home advantage is larger at the end of the season when the two teams are high in the standings. Some of these results are consistent with referee bias, but we are unable to show a causal relationship between referee bias and these results.

Yeah, no surprise.

 

[Mr Kanadensisk]

A few years ago I did some research into whether or not the host nation in an international tournament has an advantage over the other teams. The one obvious problem I ran into was that these tournaments are short and held periodically and that the sample size of games to analyze is small. In the end I decided to use the World Championships for my analysis because there were more games to analyze than from the Olympics or World Juniors. I'm not a fan of the WC but I figure for this purpose the data would be just as good.

Here are some factors that I figure are unique to International tournaments as opposed to league play.

-the host nation is not as far as the rules go the "home" team any more than any other team
-most of the games in the tournament are neutral, i.e. neither team is the host team
-travel for any team is not really a factor once the tournament starts
-the size of the ice surface, rules and style of officiating may be a factor, for example a tournament held on NHL sized ice with NHL rules may give a North American team an advantage, same is true for Europeans when using "international rules", etc
-in the World Championships where many players decline invites to play the host nation probably has less players decline invites in the years where they are hosting
-familiarity with the specific characteristics of the arena are less of a factor since often even the players of the host team do not regularly play in the arenas used for the tournament
-usually even the host team are not from the city hosting the tournament and thus are staying in hotels like everyone else

In my analysis I looked at the performance of each team that hosted a World Championship in the year they hosted and the year directly before and after. The results were surprising. The teams on average actually placed higher in the years before and after hosting than they did the year they hosted the tournament. This suggests to me that hosting an international tournament actually gives the host team a slight disadvantage. Maybe this partially explains why the host nation hasn't won a World Championship since 1986??

The only explaination I can think of is that maybe the pressure of playing in front of a home crowd actually works against the home team??

 

[Zibanejad]

The arena is at what, 1600 m? That's really not that high. I've done plenty of hiking trips at fairly high altitudes, including a number of hikes in Peru and Bolivia at 4000-5000 m, and in my opinion I don't start to feel short of breath more quickly than normal until around 2000-2500 m. Even then we're talking about very slight differences, the real "hey, why am I getting winded so quickly" stuff starts hitting me more at more like 3000 m. At 1600 m the effect is probably barely noticeable at all for NHLers.

Bolivia is famous for being the (relative) strongest soccer national team in the world on home soil home/away win ratio due to their arena being up in the mountains. Away players lose breath while home players have practiced in these conditions and got adjusted to the thin air. This fact is widely spread in cross-country skiing where athletes camp in these kind of conditions..