Road teams dominating NHL playoffs at historic rate

One of the big developing storylines through the first and into the second of the Stanley Cup playoffs has been the complete lack of home-ice advantage that teams are experiencing. Road teams are not only winning a lot of games, but they are winning more games than the home teams and winning games at a nearly unprecedented rate. 

Entering play on Friday, road teams have won 34 of the first 56 games playoff games this season, a winning percentage of .607. As the Associated Press noted, that is the highest winning percentage for road teams in any playoff year dating back to the 1966 playoffs. Those playoffs were during the Original Six era, when there were only four teams competing in the postseason.

When you dig deeper into the numbers, it becomes even more stunning to see road teams dominating this much. The AP notes that since 2011 road teams only owned a .450 winning percentage in all playoff games, while there was only one season (2018) where road teams had a winning record for the playoffs — and it was not anything even remotely close to what we are seeing this season.

Some prominent examples of home teams fumbling in the playoffs include:

• Boston, who lost only seven games at home all season, losing three games in the first round to Florida.
• Toronto just dropped its first two games at home to Florida.
• Colorado lost three games at home to the second-year Seattle Kraken. 

What is behind the lack of home-ice advantage?

For starters, hockey is unique from sports like baseball or football where having the home ice really does not give you a huge advantage. In baseball, you get the last at-bat of the game and have distinct fields that a team can build a roster around. In football, crowd noise can play a significant factor in disrupting an opponent's offense.

In hockey, the only advantage the home team gets is the advantage of the last line change before a faceoff, but smart coaches can work around those matchups. Even if they cannot, it is not really a huge difference given teams can make line changes pretty quickly a lot of the time.

Carolina Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour noted that back in the '70s and '80s some arenas had distinct advantages because places like Buffalo and Boston had smaller playing surfaces that could play to the home team's advantage. Nowadays, however, every arena is the same with no real advantage.  

There is also the reality that the salary cap has really created parity in the league, and the difference between the top playoff teams and bottom playoff teams is slim. 

All of that is reasonable. The more likely answer, though, is that the first few weeks of the playoffs have produced some random noise in a small sample size. It is still interesting to watch unfold as it sends the playoffs into chaos.