The 'Home Ice Advantage' is a hockey myth and a fact depending on how you look at it. Some people think there is no real home ice advantage (Despite the historical records showing otherwise), while the media love to play up the fact that the road team 'stole' a game and they play up home ice advantage as critically decisive in any one game.

Since we can't measure psychological effects, we could easily assume that there are little or no psychological effects or the effect is very minimal. NHL teams are generally well prepared and well coached and simply being 'at home' shouldn't mean anything entirely special. Once the puck drops, occurances are so random and so fast that the player's natural instincts should kick in above some mindless cheering.

There are, however, some REAL advantages of playing on the home rink:

The last line change - If you want to match up your best line against the opponents 4th line and so on, you should always get the matching advantage after each stop in play (partially negated by the new icing rules)

Last chance in the shootout - Similar to batting in the bottom of the 9th for a baseball team, the home ice team will always have the last chance to tie up a shootout affair.

Why do I bring this up? Well, the Sportsnet crew (before a Canucks game) were talking about how teams in the "New NHL" (their words, not mine) were doing incredibly well at home.


As you can see by the table I whipped up, only a handful of teams have a below .500 record at home. The results are a small sample, but they seem even more distorted to the home team's side than in previous seasons.

The Sportsnet guys opined that road teams usually play conservative hockey on the road, and it is backfiring on them this season. They reckon that a conversative style will lead to sitting back and taking more penalties because the home teams are more aggressive with their skating and offence.

Fair enough. It's a logical theory, but I can't get NHL to give me road/home splits for team penalties. If the road teams were taking more penalties than home teams, it would stand to reason that the home teams would be getting a lot more Power Play chances.

(Conspiracy Theory #1: Gary Bettman is telling the refs to give home teams more PP chances to increase home wins and leave fans feeling happy after attending a game. Is this a warped way to increase attendance and satisfaction? hmmm)

How about travel? Road teams have to travel far less since we have had very little in the way of inter-conference play. I would have figured road teams would be less weary and more energetic.
The last chance in the shootout might also be having effect on the standings since this should give the home team a clear advantage. Again, I don't know where to find standings that include shootout wins.

If anyone knows where to find these type of stats, please let us know. As fun as the NHL.com stat base can be, it can also leave me wanting a lot more.