I've taken each team's schedule and calculated the distance they must travel from one game to the next, whether that is to the next city on a road trip, or whether it's going back home for a home game, or back home for a few days before heading out to the next road game, etc, etc.
The chart below shows each team's estimated travel for 2010-11 in both kilometers and miles. Also included are the increase/decrease - in kilometers - from their 2009-10 travel, as well as where they ranked on travel in 2009-10 and 2008-09.
| km | miles | change (km) | 09-10 rank | 08-09 rank | ||
| 1. | Prince George | 29816 | 18531 | 3288 | 3 | 3 |
| 2. | Brandon | 28548 | 17743 | -3504 | 1 | 1 |
| 3. | Kootenay | 28124 | 17479 | 1810 | 4 | 2 |
| 4. | Edmonton | 26931 | 16738 | -695 | 2 | 4 |
| 5. | Spokane | 26856 | 16691 | 1026 | 5 | 6 |
| 6. | Prince Albert | 26785 | 16647 | 958 | 6 | 8 |
| 7. | Swift Current | 25757 | 16008 | 1577 | 9 | 13 |
| 8. | Tri-City | 25602 | 15912 | 2069 | 11 | 12 |
| 9. | Portland | 25451 | 15818 | -297 | 7 | 9 |
| 10. | Kamloops | 25393 | 15782 | 2574 | 14 | 7 |
| 11. | Lethbridge | 24957 | 15511 | 2132 | 13 | 11 |
| 12. | Medicine Hat | 24825 | 15429 | 2344 | 16 | 20 |
| 13. | Red Deer | 24465 | 15205 | 1744 | 15 | 5 |
| 14. | Saskatoon | 24441 | 15190 | 1405 | 12 | 17 |
| 15. | Regina | 24111 | 14985 | 4891 | 22 | 22 |
| 16. | Vancouver | 23096 | 14354 | 1600 | 19 | 19 |
| 17. | Calgary | 22941 | 14258 | -1115 | 10 | 16 |
| 18. | Everett | 22447 | 13951 | 1843 | 20 | 18 |
| 19. | Moose Jaw | 22425 | 13937 | 683 | 18 | 14 |
| 20. | Kelowna | 22346 | 13888 | -2755 | 8 | 10 |
| 21. | Seattle | 21913 | 13619 | 2086 | 21 | 21 |
| 22. | Chilliwack | 19231 | 11952 | -2526 | 17 | 15 |
As you can see, the four most-travelled teams have not changed in the last three years - it is always Brandon, Edmonton, Kootenay, and Prince George in some combination. Safe to say that this is because those are the teams most isolated from their closest competition. Edmonton being on that list always surprises me because they are actually fairly close geographically to a couple of their divisional rivals....but I guess overall they are far enough from enough teams to add up to a big mileage total.
On the other hand, Chilliwack has it the cushiest - they travel 2700 km less than their nearest competition at the bottom of the list. I couldn't believe that disparity when I saw the numbers the first time, so I recalculated Chilliwack to make sure it is right. It is.
To put things in another perspective there, Chilliwack travels 10,600 km less this season than Prince George does. Assuming the buses average 100 km/h on the road, that is 106 hours less travel time for the Bruins than for their divisional opponent up north. That's almost 4.5 complete days less on the bus.
9 comments:
Wow. That works out to approx. 8 (40 hour) work weeks on the bus for PG.
Chilliwack (my hometown) is fortunately located for a WHL team. Vancouver is a 1-hour drive, Kamloops and Kelowna are both 3-hours (by car, bus is longer but still...). Prince George is the other team in the division and Chilliwack is an 8-9 hour drive up there. Considering the amount of divisional play in the WHL, the short distances for the Bruins add up! Or rather...they don't add up to much!
It would be fun to compare this to the OHL. And by "fun" I mean a lot of work.
I would assume Chilliwack should be on the bottom of this every year. They play Vancouver, Seattle, Everett, Kelowna and Kamloops 16 times combined on the road all of which are under 3 hours away. They play the Central division on the road this year which is a big reason for the -2526. Really i'm sure Seattle, Everett, and Vancouver are pretty light on travel (outside of bad scheduling).
Your assumption of 100 km/h for travel is probably high - but either way that doesn't take in to consideration that other, necessary evil of additional travel: the actual nights away from home in order to cover those additional 10,600 km. It would be interesting to calculate days/nights spent in some other town than one's own for each club.
Wow! Must have taken you a while to figure out all that! Neat stats though, thanks for the read :)
it's weird how swift current travels 3000km more than moose jaw. I wonder if the BC trip adds up more than the American trip?
Thanks for the insights. Lots of work.
anyway you slice it travel in the dub is brutal
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