No past years to compare it to, but here's the 2010-11 OHL projected travel distances:
| km | miles | ||
| 1 | Sault Ste Marie | 19491 | 12114 |
| 2 | Ottawa | 18579 | 11547 |
| 3 | Sudbury | 17302 | 10753 |
| 4 | Erie | 17089 | 10621 |
| 5 | Saginaw | 16370 | 10174 |
| 6 | Plymouth | 16325 | 10146 |
| 7 | Windsor | 16198 | 10067 |
| 8 | Sarnia | 15672 | 9740 |
| 9 | Kingston | 15614 | 9704 |
| 10 | Belleville | 14923 | 9275 |
| 11 | Niagara | 14486 | 9003 |
| 12 | London | 14437 | 8973 |
| 13 | Kitchener | 14281 | 8876 |
| 14 | Guelph | 13961 | 8677 |
| 15 | Owen Sound | 13947 | 8668 |
| 16 | Oshawa | 13491 | 8385 |
| 17 | Barrie | 13387 | 8320 |
| 18 | Peterborough | 13214 | 8213 |
| 19 | Brampton | 12503 | 7771 |
| 20 | Mississauga | 11784 | 7324 |
As you can see by comparing this chart to the WHL one below, OHL teams have it a LOT easier than the WHL teams do. Which should be no surprise really, given that the entire OHL is contained within one province (and mostly within one small chunk of that province too) and three U.S. cities which are all fairly close to the Ontario border.
We need to keep in mind that the OHL teams only play 68 games instead of the WHL's 72, so they have 2 less road games to travel to, which bumps their numbers down slightly when comparing. But even if you add 5% or so to the OHL totals to account for those missing 2 games, only one OHL team - Sault Ste Marie, the most "remote" outpost in the league, has a travel schedule which is worse than the cushiest the WHL has to offer. And the Mississauga St. Michael's Majors travel only 11,784 km this season.....in the WHL, we call that "a weekend".
This isn't intended to be a bash-the-OHL post though.....the travel is what it is. I'm just showing the degree of the disparity in what the leagues go through. If I have time, I'll even do the QMJHL in the next few days too. I suspect the "Q" is probably going to rank somewhere in between the WHL and OHL - their teams are more spread out than the OHL's but not quite as much as the WHL's.
Couple other things.....
- WHL fans can be dismissive of the shorter driving distances in the OHL but we do need to consider that some of these "shorter" drives actually take longer than the mileage would suggest, due to highways in Southern Ontario being considerably busier than the TransCanada is going through Saskatchewan. It may only be a 150 km trip but if your bus is only averaging 50 km/h, that takes three hours.
- I've never really analyzed an OHL schedule before, and I was very surprised to see that there are actually very few road trips of longer than 3 games, for any team. I guess this is a luxury afforded by shorter distances of travel, even for inter-conference games. A typical "long" OHL road trip appears to be a weekend 3-in-3 and even then the total distance traveled may be only slightly more than what the Prince George Cougars do for a Wednesday one-off trip to Kamloops and back.
- Longest driving distance between two cities in the OHL is between Sault Ste Marie and Erie, which clocks in at 969 km. In the WHL, it's Brandon to Portland, which is 2444 km.
- Shortest distance in the OHL is Brampton to Mississauga, which measures (try not to laugh) 6.4 km between the two arenas. After a bad game the visiting coach could make the players walk home and nobody would complain it was abuse. The shortest distance in the WHL is Regina to Moose Jaw, which comes in at 71 km, followed very closely by Everett to Seattle at 74 km.
We need to keep in mind that the OHL teams only play 68 games instead of the WHL's 72, so they have 2 less road games to travel to, which bumps their numbers down slightly when comparing. But even if you add 5% or so to the OHL totals to account for those missing 2 games, only one OHL team - Sault Ste Marie, the most "remote" outpost in the league, has a travel schedule which is worse than the cushiest the WHL has to offer. And the Mississauga St. Michael's Majors travel only 11,784 km this season.....in the WHL, we call that "a weekend".
This isn't intended to be a bash-the-OHL post though.....the travel is what it is. I'm just showing the degree of the disparity in what the leagues go through. If I have time, I'll even do the QMJHL in the next few days too. I suspect the "Q" is probably going to rank somewhere in between the WHL and OHL - their teams are more spread out than the OHL's but not quite as much as the WHL's.
Couple other things.....
- WHL fans can be dismissive of the shorter driving distances in the OHL but we do need to consider that some of these "shorter" drives actually take longer than the mileage would suggest, due to highways in Southern Ontario being considerably busier than the TransCanada is going through Saskatchewan. It may only be a 150 km trip but if your bus is only averaging 50 km/h, that takes three hours.
- I've never really analyzed an OHL schedule before, and I was very surprised to see that there are actually very few road trips of longer than 3 games, for any team. I guess this is a luxury afforded by shorter distances of travel, even for inter-conference games. A typical "long" OHL road trip appears to be a weekend 3-in-3 and even then the total distance traveled may be only slightly more than what the Prince George Cougars do for a Wednesday one-off trip to Kamloops and back.
- Longest driving distance between two cities in the OHL is between Sault Ste Marie and Erie, which clocks in at 969 km. In the WHL, it's Brandon to Portland, which is 2444 km.
- Shortest distance in the OHL is Brampton to Mississauga, which measures (try not to laugh) 6.4 km between the two arenas. After a bad game the visiting coach could make the players walk home and nobody would complain it was abuse. The shortest distance in the WHL is Regina to Moose Jaw, which comes in at 71 km, followed very closely by Everett to Seattle at 74 km.
4 comments:
Thanks Alan for doing all the work you do to keep us informed..
The move of the T-birds to Kent actually added 90 miles/150 km a year for a road game between Everett and Seattle.
Rouyn-Noranda to Cape Breton is a bit under 2100km so the WHL is still good for the longest trip. However, each team in the Q plays each other at least twice meaning both teams have to make that trip in a season.
This question was being posed again on HF Boards, hopefully someone is still managing this site.. I have a question.. How exactly was this calculated, did you just do the distance between two cities? or did you calculate it as the team would travel? (I.e. If Ottawa goes on a road trip you would calculate Ottawa to London, then London to Sarnia, then Sarnia back to Ottawa)?
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