Friend of the blog Rich Pollock asked me how rest affected a team's performance. I wrote about this long, long ago, but I only looked at individual stats and not at actual team shot rates. (I also looked at the impact of travel distance.)
First, let's look at the frequency of rest combinations:
| Away Team | Home Team | PCT of Games |
| Rested | Rested | 68.30 |
| Back-to-back Away | Rested | 12.47 |
| Away after Home | Rested | 7.69 |
| Rested | Return from Away Game | 5.21 |
| Away after Home | Return from Away Game | 2.82 |
| Back-to-back Away | Return from Away Game | 1.64 |
| Rested | Back-to-back Home | 0.98 |
| Back-to-back Away | Back-to-back Home | 0.47 |
| Away after Home | Back-to-back Home | 0.41 |
Next I looked at Fenwick, score tied - well, not really Fenwick, because I included special teams:
| Home Team Stats | Fenwick% | SF/G | SA/G | Goal% | GF/G | GA/G |
| Both Rested | 51.9 | 15.9 | 14.7 | 53.2 | 1.03 | 0.91 |
| Away Travel, Home Rested | 53.2 | 16.2 | 14.2 | 54.7 | 1.04 | 0.86 |
As we expected, the home team does better when its opponent is playing back-to-back games. The unrested team suffers both offensively and defensively. The overall difference is roughly 2.5 wins per 82 games:
| Home Team Stats | Exp Win% | Spct F | Spct A | PDO |
| Both Rested | 563 | 6.47 | 6.14 | 1003 |
| Away Travel, Home Rested | 594 | 6.43 | 6.05 | 1004 |
Unlike the shot total department, we can't conclude that there's a consequential change in shooting or save percentage when a team is playing back-to-back games.