Home Ice - How do you measure it?

[Romanov]

I have kept it simple by multiplying the home team's gf/g by 1.05 and dividing the away team's gf/g by 1.05. I see that sagarin says to add .35 to the home team (which would be the ~ same as multiplying gf/g by 1.059 and dividing ga/g 1.059 if you only look at gfg and gag).

What do you do? Do you actually attribute home ice on a team by team basis (as in the blackhawks would have a better home ice advantage than the average team)?

[toddorts]

I just use a standard factor. I used to do it on a team-by-team basis, but I found it to be too erratic to be useful.

[Romanov]

I just use a standard factor. I used to do it on a team-by-team basis, but I found it to be too erratic to be useful.

I figured that if a team had a great home ice advantage it was probably not significant and was due to variance

[mebaran]

I figured that if a team had a great home ice advantage it was probably not significant and was due to variance

Using a team-by-team home ice factor tends to increase the entropy/white noise in the model...so it's hard to stay on top of. I used to do it as well, but I just use a league-wide factor.

What comes to mind is San Jose's insane run on their home ice. The next year, people were severely overestimating their edge when playing in the "Shark Tank". I think they had something like a 60-10 record at home in two seasons? Correct me if I'm wrong on that figure...but you get the idea. That's an unsustainable home ice advantage.

Also, I think how good a team is affects their home ice advantage (haven't looked into this deeply yet). Just like in the NFL, teams coming off a bye tend to play better, obviously, but the better that team off a bye is, the better they play off a bye. So Indianapolis coming off a bye obviously gets a couple point advantage, but Green Bay coming off a bye has a tremendous advantage over their opponent. Probably an extra 4-5 points (again, haven't looked at this as much in NHL, but I would tend to think these ideas carry over from sport to sport). A good team with more time to prepare will do better than a poorer one.

[hels]

[mebaran]

Couldn't they have just titled it "Home Advantage by League"? lol...I had to re-read the title

[Sawyer]

Don't give too much credit to home advantage in hockey.