Major junior teams travel by bus, and the miles add up very differently across the country. This page estimates each team's season travel by following its schedule from arena to arena, and tracks how dense that schedule is: back-to-backs are games on consecutive nights, and a 3-in-3 is three games in three nights. The lower section answers whether any of it matters, comparing win rates when teams play tired against when they play rested. One consistent answer: total season travel has almost no relationship with where teams finish - the grind shows up game by game, in short rest and long trips into road games, not in the standings. Distances are road-style estimates, not odometer readings, so treat small gaps between teams as ties.
WHL
3,638 kmavg. travel per team
Most travel: Prince Albert Raiders (11,046 km)
3.4 back-to-backs per team · 1.1 days of rest between games
Win rates by days of rest and bus distance across the selected schedule. Travel comparisons hold venue constant - road games are compared only with other road games.
Win rate by days of rest
No rest (back-to-back)48.1%3.15 GF/G · 54 GP
1 day of rest42.0%2.84 GF/G · 50 GP
2 days of rest46.4%3.18 GF/G · 28 GP
3+ days of rest50.0%3.17 GF/G · 12 GP
Road win rate by trip length
Short trip (under 200 km)47.2%36 GP
Medium trip (200-499 km)38.5%13 GP
Long haul (500+ km)45.2%31 GP
All road games: 45.0% win rate over 80 GP.
Rest advantage
50.0%
Win rate for teams with at least two more days of rest than their opponent (2–2)
Homecoming fatigue
32.3%
Home record after travelling 300+ km into a home game (10–21) · all home games: 47.5%
Decades of schedule grind
Regular seasons only. Travel averages appear from 2015-16 onward, where every team's arena can be placed.
Average travel per team (km)
Back-to-backs per team
Distances are estimates: straight-line distance between arenas multiplied by 1.3 to approximate road routes. Memorial Cup games are excluded. Full details in Methodology
