Impact of Travel on Offensive Performance

Last week, I looked at how the number of days of rest a player had affected his offensive performance. But not all back-to-back games are created equal - two home games in two days is not the same as two games in two days with extensive travel.

If we divide back-to-back games since the lockout by the miles traveled by a player's team, we can see the impact of travel distance:

1 day rest	GP	P/82	+/-/82	TOI
>1000	359	38.1	-19.9	24.14
500-1000	5354	38.5	-7.4	24.11
100-500	11898	39.4	-4.1	24.14

There haven't been a lot of back-to-back games with long travel in between - just 20 in total over the last four seasons. But the impact of travel distance on offensive performance without a day of rest is very stark.

How does this compare to playing two days later?

2 days rest	GP	P/82	+/-/82	TOI
>1000	8427	40.2	1.3	24.15
500-1000	9850	41.0	0.4	24.11
100-500	17845	40.8	0.2	24.21

This time we have a lot more games in the long-distance bucket. After 2 days, the length of travel no longer appears to have an obvious impact on performance. Our takeaway is unsurprising: clearly, if you're playing back-to-back away games, you want to minimize the amount of time spent traveling between the two road cities!