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!
