Below you'll find a chart listing the distance each team will travel next season, in both kilometers and miles. Also given is the increase/decrease for that team's travel from last year (in kilometers only), plus their travel for the last two seasons, for comparison purposes. The past seasons give kilometers, miles and rank.
The past season numbers for Victoria are for the team when it was in Chilliwack and obviously are useless for comparing to this season.
What I did was take each team's schedule and calculate how far a drive it was (using Mapquest for the distance numbers) from the site of each game to the site of their next game. That's the indisputable part; the hard part was making judgement calls on when a team might come home between road games. If you play in City A on October 1 and then the next game is in City B on October 3rd, will they come home between games (adding mileage) or stay on the road (incurring hotel & meal costs, etc)? In every case I did what I thought made sense to the team....no doubt I made a mistake here and there but it's the same methodology I've used for three years now so if I'm wrong, at least I'm consistently wrong.
Without further blathering, here's the chart:
| Rank | Team | km | miles | change (km) | 2010-11 | 2009-10 |
| 1 | Prince George | 29519 | 18342 | -297 | 29816 / 18531 (1) | 26528 / 16484 (3) |
| 2 | Brandon | 29227 | 18161 | 679 | 28548 / 17743 (2) | 32052 / 19916 (1) |
| 3 | Kootenay | 28246 | 17551 | 122 | 28124 / 17479 (3) | 26314 / 16351 (4) |
| 4 | Tri-City | 26903 | 16717 | 1301 | 25602 / 15912 (8) | 23533 / 14623 (11) |
| 5 | Kamloops | 25899 | 16093 | 506 | 25393 / 15782 (10) | 22819 / 14179 (14) |
| 6 | Edmonton | 25880 | 16081 | -1051 | 26931 / 16738 (4) | 27626 / 17166 (2) |
| 7 | Prince Albert | 25284 | 15711 | -1501 | 26785 / 16647 (6) | 25827 / 16048 (6) |
| 8 | Red Deer | 24311 | 15106 | -154 | 24465 / 15205 (13) | 22721 / 14118 (15) |
| 9 | Medicine Hat | 24095 | 14972 | -730 | 24825 / 15429 (12) | 22481 / 13969 (16) |
| 10 | Spokane | 24023 | 14927 | -2833 | 26856 / 16691 (5) | 25830 / 16050 (5) |
| 11 | Swift Current | 22750 | 14136 | -3007 | 25757 / 16008 (7) | 24180 / 15025 (9) |
| 12 | Portland | 22746 | 14134 | -2705 | 25451 / 15818 (9) | 25748 / 15999 (7) |
| 13 | Lethbridge | 22698 | 14104 | -2259 | 24957 / 15511 (11) | 22825 / 14183 (13) |
| 14 | Vancouver | 22275 | 13841 | -821 | 23096 / 14354 (16) | 21496 / 13357 (19) |
| 15 | Kelowna | 22069 | 13713 | -277 | 22346 / 13888 (20) | 25101 / 15597 (8) |
| 16 | Victoria | 21911 | 13615 | 2680 | 19231 / 11952 (22) | 21757 / 13519 (17) |
| 17 | Regina | 21881 | 13596 | -2230 | 24111 / 14985 (15) | 19220 / 11943 (22) |
| 18 | Saskatoon | 21565 | 13400 | -2876 | 24441 / 15190 (14) | 23036 / 14314 (12) |
| 19 | Moose Jaw | 21198 | 13172 | -1227 | 22425 / 13937 (19) | 21742 / 13510 (18) |
| 20 | Calgary | 21173 | 13156 | -1768 | 22941 / 14258 (17) | 24056 / 14948 (10) |
| 21 | Seattle | 20257 | 12587 | -1656 | 21913 / 13619 (21) | 19827 / 12320 (21) |
| 22 | Everett | 19283 | 11982 | -3164 | 22447 / 13951 (18) | 20604 / 12803 (20) |
So for the 2nd year in a row, Prince George will be the travel kings of the WHL this season. In fact, the entire top three remain unchanged from last year.
As you might expect, generally there isn't a lot of movement in the rankings, most teams move up or down only a couple places. And there isn't a lot of difference between a lot of teams, a thousand miles is all that separates teams 11 through 20, for example - divided over 36 road games a year, that's pretty negligible difference between most of those teams.
A few other notes:
- with Victoria, we have now re-introduced ferry rides back into WHL transportation plans. These numbers only account for the distance traveled and don't consider extra nights required in hotels due to ferry schedules, or for the fact that ferries are freakin' slow. So while it may only add 40 km or so to Victoria's travel every time they catch the ferry to the mainland, it takes them two hours of travel time. In that same two hours, a prairie team could have traveled 200 km across Saskatchewan.
- I know I have compared this year's travel to last year, but 2009-10 is a better comparison due to the U.S. teams' alternating home/away schedules for the East & Central divisions. Last year the U.S. teams hosted the Central teams and visited the East teams. This year (as in 2009-10) they will visit the Central teams and host the East teams. Since this quirk affects all teams' schedules, 2009-10 is probably a better comparison.
Enjoy. Comments welcome, as always....
2 comments:
While the top 3 remain the same, near the bottom, the consistency of Moose Jaw and Seattle is interesting. Having rivals nearby helps.
Kelly Mac is notorious for taking his team home between games against Sask teams. Bet he has the top mileage by a wide margin.taerat
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