Ralph Krueger spoke with the media at the end of last week to recap the Buffalo Sabres season. He had some interesting comments throughout, but one random thing that caught my attention was his thoughts on their play on home ice and the road.

When you look back at the Sabres stats from this past season there are some interesting numbers worth discussing and their splits in performance based on the venue is another one. Breaking down road and home splits it’s important to note the difference that the venue has on team performance.

Plenty of research has shown that the home team usually benefits from a boost in performance while the visiting team lags. Therefore, you should expect to see a drop in the numbers on the road when comparing the splits and that’s the case with the Sabres.

Splits

Getting back to Krueger’s comments, I wanted to see exactly how bad the team did perform on the road compared to at home. One thing that is clear out of the gate is that they were a much better team at home than on the road in the percentage of points earned compared to the rest of the league. At home, the Sabres had a .629 points percentage which was good enough for 11th best in the league. On the road, they had a .353 points percentage and that ranked them 28th in the NHL.

As we can see, their inability to pick up points on the road cost them this season. Now, the question is how differently did they perform as a team on the road compared to at home? The results on the road were poor, but that doesn’t mean the performance was drastically different.

During his video conference last Friday, Krueger briefly discussed the team’s performance at home versus on the road saying:

“I thought we made it uncomfortable for teams and quite assertive in the way we defended especially at home. We need to carry that on the road, we need to underline that game on the road.”

As you can see above, Krueger’s statement is accurate. The Sabres were far superior at home than on the road. They ranked 19th in the league in shot quality against (xGA/60) and 13th in goals against on the road.

At home, they were ranked 7th in shot quality against and 8th in actual goals against at 5 on 5.

The interesting part is that in terms of shot quality for (xGF/60), they were not better at home. They posted a 1.98 shot quality for rating on home ice this season, but a slightly better 2.04 rating on the road. The Sabres were only one of eight teams that had a higher shot quality for rating on the road than they did at home, according to Natural Stat Trick. As you can see below, the Sabres were the worst in the league at shot quality for at home, but still managed to end ranked 23rd in actual goals for at 5 on 5.

Like their shot quality offense overall, it wasn’t much better on the road in relation to the entire league and the same can be said for their actual goal scoring.

Looking at this data, my next thought was to see if I could figure out why the Sabres scored a lot more at home than they did on the road when they had a lower quality shooting. I found the answer in the on-ice shooting percentage. At home, the Sabres shot 9.03% at 5 on 5 which was the seventh-best shooting percentage in the league. On the road, they shot 7.38% which ranked them 22nd among all teams.

Score and Venue Adjusted

Again, it’s not surprising to see a better performance in shooting at home compared to the road, but this is a drastic difference. Only three other teams had a bigger discrepancy in their shooting percentage based on venue than the Sabres, according to Natural Stat Trick.

We’ve danced around it here, but looking at these numbers without accounting for any score or venue adjustment can be misleading.

I’m not going to get into all the details on venue and score adjustments because that can be an entire article in itself. If you want to get into the numbers and thought process behind it, Micah McCurdy has a writeup on his model that is used by many of the stat sites we all look at.

When you look at the SVA (score and venue adjusted) data, it looks like the Sabres performed better on the road in shot share and quality percentage at 5 on 5.

• Shot Share (CF%): Home – 47.46% | Away – 49.70%
• Shot Quality (xGF%): 46.93% | 47.93%
• Goal Differential (GF%): 50.03% | 48.10%

Once again, we see the difference in actual goal scoring at home versus on the road. It’s possible that the Sabres played in more games with a lead that could impact the results negatively and on the opposite could have happened on the road.

Therefore, let’s take a look at the team SVA data at 5 on 5 when the game is within one goal to attempt to pull out the drastic score adjustment situations:

• Shot Share (CF%): Home – 48.04% | Away – 51.62%
• Shot Quality (xGF%): 46.53% | 49.01%
• Goal Differential (GF%): 49.07% | 47.07%

We’re getting the same results here, but more in favor of their performance on the road. They were significantly better in shot share and quality on the road. However, we continue to see the disparity in goal differential.

Special Teams

Quickly I want to touch on the special teams because that does impact if the team wins or loses a game on some nights. We’ll start with the power play because there’s not much of a difference. According to NHL.com, the Sabres were 20th in power play percentage on the road and 19th at home.

The major difference we see is in the penalty kill. At home, they were ranked a respectable 16th overall with an 80.5% PK unit. The story is much different when the Sabres were the visitors. On the road, they were the worst penalty kill unit in the NHL at 69.4%. That is an incredible difference that is beyond the home/away data adjustment.

To be honest, I don’t have a valid reason why that would be the case. It’s not like there’s some sort of matchup disadvantage. They would use the same players at home or away regardless of who the opponent sends onto the ice. This is just one of those data points you look at and think if this unit performed even a little bit better, that the actual results in points earned would have put them closer to their performance at home.

Conclusion

I threw a lot of data at you, so let’s bring it all together to summarize the findings.

First, Krueger was accurate in his overall statement that the Sabres defended a lot better at home than the did on the road. The advantage of being the home team allows you to have the last change and gives that team the ability to find the more advantageous matchups. As the visiting club, you can’t find those matchups so easily. When you’re essentially a one-line team like the Sabres were this season, it’s easy for the opponent to shut down that line with the matchup they like.

Having said all that, I don’t think the Sabres performed as bad on the road as their record indicated. We showed that their possession and shot quality share was better as the visiting team. The problem is that it didn’t translate into scoring.

One of the primary reasons for the scoring differential could be that the Sabres top line of Jack Eichel, Sam Reinhart, and Victor Olofsson found it more difficult to get chances offensively with tougher matchups on the road. Other players could have seen better scoring chances. However, those other players are not the finishers of the three aforementioned players and could have contributed to the difference in on-ice shooting percentage.

Finally, the penalty kill hurt the Sabres on the road. They performed considerably worse than they did at home and is a major factor in why the team was at the bottom of the league in points percentage on the road.

None of this is anything that you can necessarily go out and fix. There are not “road-scoring specialists” that you can acquire. It’s a part of the game that can go your way one season and against you the next.

The one thing they can do to improve their odds of winning on the road is to just acquire better hockey players in general.

Data via Natural Stat Trick and NHL.com