Canucks’ 2024-25 travel schedule easy-peasy by historic standards

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A Vancouver Canucks fan is usually wrong when they say their team has the worst travel schedule in the NHL — but they are also never far off the truth.

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Yes, the Canucks have sometimes in their existence had the most onerous travel itinerary in the NHL, but in general that’s just not the case any more.

For starters, they don’t have to travel to another continent to play games — the last time the Canucks drew the league’s interest to fly abroad was in the 2017-18 pre-season — but teams like the Florida Panthers and Dallas Stars do, as they will in November when they play in the NHL Global Series in Helsinki.

But even without flying to Europe (or China, where they flew in 2017), the Canucks have generally been in the top-five teams in travel, year in, year out.

In 2024-25, that will not be the case.

For the first time in recent memory and quite possibly ever, the Canucks won’t be in the upper echelons of distance travelled during the NHL regular season. They will nearly league average.

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Thomas Nestico, a self-described “baseball and hockey nerd,” added up the travel that all the NHL’s squads face this season and found the Canucks will only fly the 14th-most miles in the coming season, 68,397 kilometres (42,500 miles).

The Stars and Panthers will travel the most this season, not a big surprise given their trip to the farthest end of Scandinavia, and their statuses as cities that sit at the edge of the NHL’s map.

Being on the edge of the map is a reason why the Canucks, Oilers and Sharks have so often found themselves near the top of the list, and the fact both the Sabres and Devils will still travel an average and below-average amount, respectively, despite travelling to Czechia for a season-opening series, is a reminder in the opposite direction — both those teams play in the middle of the NHL’s map and thus travel very little in relative terms.

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The Pittsburgh Penguins will occupy the NHL’s travel centre this season, as they will travel the least, 51,016 kilometres (31,700 miles).

In past seasons, the Canucks have travelled somewhere around 75,000 kilometres. This season, they are 10,000 kilometres short of that, partly because of how the NHL’s unbalanced schedule has played out this year — there are two teams inside the division Vancouver will play only three times (this year the Canucks travel to Edmonton only once) — and then play four teams in the Central division only three times (the Canucks will travel only once to Chicago and Nashville). That is partly because of apparent efficiency in how their schedule has been assembled.

This reduction in travel could play to the Canucks’ advantage. Less travel means more time to recuperate.

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Last year, head coach Rick Tocchet was very aggressive in hyping up the importance of following the science of rest and recovery in optimizing a flying schedule. You know he will be loving how the league has set up the Canucks’ schedule this year.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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