Home Ice Advantage

[NumberCruncher]

How much is it for MN Boys High School hockey? It's prominent in almost every sport at almost every level. Does anyone have the data on this or perhaps a site that shows scores along with location of the games? (Other than MN Hub)

[fivehole628]

I don't have any data but playing mh hs hockey I can tell you home-ice advantage is a huge thing for most teams.

[karl(east)]

I have data on 28 teams from last season handy. These are almost all upper-end AA teams. I can give the list if you want it. I threw out tournaments unless the team was the host, in which case I gave them home ice advantage. Playoffs are not included.

Home teams: 211-79-24 (.672)

Road teams: 189-84-27 (.630)

So yes, home ice advantage does exist. It's not incredibly strong, but it does exist.

Some teams that caught my eye (Home/Road):

Moorhead 5-6/7-3-1
Cloquet 6-7/0-8-1
Hopkins 4-8/4-4-1
Hill 11-1-1/9-0
White Bear 8-1/6-6-1
Centennial 9-0-1/6-5-1
Woodbury 6-4-2/9-1
Jefferson 7-4/8-1-2

Some of these teams might just have had much harder home or road schedules this past year, though. More data is needed, but it's a start.

I also thought it might be a good idea to compare strong teams in the same conference that play each other twice a year in a home-road series. (This also includes the 3 meetings between Edina and Wayzata.) Teams used include:

CLC-Edina, Tonka, Wayzata
Lake-Jefferson, EP, Burnsville, Eagan
NWSC-Blaine, Cent, Osseo, Elk River, Andover, Maple Grove
CSC-St. Thomas, Hill
SEC-WBL, Flake, Stillwater, CDH, Woodbury
Also-Moorhead/Roseau. In a normal year I would've included East-Cloquet and GR-Cloquet but Cloquet was so bad last year I think it would be too skewed. Plus, we have already established that Cloquet had a major home ice advantage last year. (The splits against East reflect this; the splits against GR do not.)

Home teams: 34-23-11 (.500)
Away teams: 23-34-11 (.338)

A much stronger correlation, as one might expect.

In general, it seems home/road didn't make much of a difference for the strongest teams. Good teams, it seems, are good enough to overcome home ice advantage (again, as one might expect). It plays a bigger role when the teams are not as good, and in games between two very close teams.

[east hockey]

I did a study several years ago; from that particular season (not sure but I think it was 1997-98 ) the advantage was 0.12 goals per game in favor of the home team. If someone had a ton of time on their hands, they could probably crunch the numbers on last season's games from followthepuck.com.

Lee

[NumberCruncher]

karl, where do you get your data/scores from? And maybe I'd be the only one, what are chances you indicate home/away team on your site this year when you input scores?

[nikebauer05]

If you were to ask any high school player they would definitely say that it is a very big advantage. They know how the puck will play off the boards and how the corners are. And obviously the crowd would help out somewhat.

[brandy38]

Some teams that caught my eye (Home/Road):

Moorhead 5-6/7-3-1
Cloquet 6-7/0-8-1
Hopkins 4-8/4-4-1
Hill 11-1-1/9-0
White Bear 8-1/6-6-1
Centennial 9-0-1/6-5-1
Woodbury 6-4-2/9-1
Jefferson 7-4/8-1-2

If it helps to explain the disparity in home and away records, two of Woodbury's home losses came to Minnetonka (in their tournament at the beginning of the year) and to Edina. Another was that shocking 4-2 loss to Park.

[karl(east)]

karl, where do you get your data/scores from? And maybe I'd be the only one, what are chances you indicate home/away team on your site this year when you input scores?

Lee's the one with the website, not me. So you'd have to ask him about that.

I collected a lot info on those 28 teams last year because I issued weekly top-15 rankings for AA. I just recorded those teams' game-by-game schedules and tinkered with some of the numbers in my spare time. I didn't put much stock in home/road records last year, but now that I have some decent data backing up home ice advantage, I might take that into consideration a bit more in this year's rankings.

[O-townClown]

The way to calculate is to define a universe. It could be the whole state or it could be one conference. Then look for the W-L record of the HOME team in these games.

As Karl says, he wasn't doing this to track home ice advantage. As a result, his Top 15 sample can't really be used to yield an accurate conclusion. For example, Edina hosts other teams over the holidays. Do they win because they are at home, or because they have been better than Elk River recently.

A win percentage under .500 is indicative of a disadvantage. .500 means no advantage. If you get something as high as .600 there is clearly a significant advantage. .700 or higher would shock me. Of course, 1.00 would mean the home team wins every time; we know that's not true.

Someone threw out a "puck spread" above. That's a good measure too, but I'd be more interested in the win rate.

Does anyone have scores I can pull? I'll calculate it if they do.

Big Ten basketball has a HUGE home court advantage. Widely believed to be worth 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 points when compared to a neutral court, basketball spreads swing 7 to 9 points from the first match to the return.

[O-townClown]

Looks like I can do this pretty easily on Follow the Puck. Give me a few.

[O-townClown]

Classic Lake

Wayzata 6-0-2
Minnetonka 5-1-2
Edina 4-3-1
Hopkins 2-5-1
Armstrong 0-8

20 games

9 won by home team
8 won by visitor
3 ties

Win % of 52.5

[pioneers]

H-M lifetime is

487-101-10 At Aldrich

522-180-18 at all other venues.

[O-townClown]

Lake

Kennedy did not play a full schedule. Some games were at "neutral" sites like when Jefferson plays Kennedy or when Apple Valley plays Eastview.

49 wins by home team
44 wins by away team
4 ties

.526 win percentage for home team

Same as Classic Lake

That's all I'm doing. It is simple, but it takes a while to tabulate all the games.

Small sample, but for those two conferences it was around 52.5%.

[NumberCruncher]

Good work. I am doing some of my own ratings and wanted to see if anything out there has been done about home ice advantage so that I don't have to go digging and crunching myself. Thank you.

[Roseauverrated]

Interesting stat: since the 2007-2008 season, Minnetonka is 32-1-1 while playing at the Pagel Activity Center. The 1 loss was to Benilde on January 1, 2009 and the tie was to Wayzata near the end of last season. I'd say the Skippers definitely like playing on their home ice.

[council member retired]

HM has a pretty good record at the X

[SPUDNUT]

HM has a pretty good record at the X

H-M has a pretty good record anywhere !

[nipe'n]

Well now that we have heard about all the numbers... Which teams from player experience have the best home ice advantage?