Stats 1101 Week 1

Here on htphockey.com, we've decided to try a couple new weekly features this Wild season. One of those weekly features will be a review of the week's and the season's numbers.

Since the Wild have played, uh, zero games, I wanted to look at how the schedule is laid out. I don't have much analysis to go with this week's numbers.

By day of week, the NHL has the following schedule:

Day       League  Wild
Sunday     132      9 
Monday     115      9 
Tuesday    227     15 
Wednesday   90      5 
Thursday   234     20 
Friday     152      6 
Saturday   280     18 

As  you can see, Saturday is the most popular day of the week for the League, with Thursday and Tuesday also very common game days. The League apparently hates Wednesday. The Wild's most common game day is Thursday, with Saturday and Tuesday close behind.

By quarter and month, here's the Wild's breakdown, by type of rival:

          D    C    IC
Q1        6    3    11
Q2        8    5     8
Q3        8    9     4
Q4        7    4     9

October   6    2     5
November  5    2     8
December  4    4     6
January   6    5     3
February  1    3     1
March     3    5     7
April     4    0     2
(D = Divisional game, C = Conference, IC = Inter-Conference)

Interestingly, the Wild play most inter-conference games at the beginning of the season, but also a large number at the end of the season. Fittingly, the final six games include 4 against the division (I say "fittingly" because that has been common in seasons past).

Thirteen times this season the Wild will play back to back games. Fourteen times, their opponent is playing on no rest.

Days off  Wild  Oppt
   0       13    14
   1       48    44
   2       15    15
   3        3     5
   4        1     2

On average, the Wild play on 1.37 days rest. Their opponents average 1.43 days.

The difference in rest is also something to look at.


-3    2
-2    5
-1   11
 0   45
 1   15
 2    2
 3    1

In other words, the Wild have three more days of rest than their opponent once this season. (March 8 in Dallas. The Wild will be playing on 4 days rest, the Stars one day.)

So what does all this mean?

Not a damn thing. That's why they play the games. Maybe in April, I'll revisit this topic and we'll see something important from this.

But I doubt it.

As an aside, Mason's got a busy few months coming up, but I fully expect to see drunken rants from him on a regular basis.

I'll be back tomorrow with another new feature.