Through 59 games of the 2019-20 Calgary Flames season, an interesting trend has emerged. Against the generally-held conventional wisdom, the Flames are more successful away from the Saddledome than at their own building – they have 17 wins on the road compared to 13 at home.
In an effort to figure out just what’s happening, we dug into the numbers.

Team trends

The Flames have a .556 points percentage at home versus a .563 percentage on the road. So where does that come from?
Their home possession rate is 51.3% compared to 49.0% on the road. Scoring chance-wise, they’re not playing that much differently – the rate they generate high danger and “regular” danger chances is pretty much the same at home as on the road, while they allow slightly more chances in both situations on the road. That makes sense – as does their lower possession rate on the road – given that the home side retains last change.
The big thing that emerges as a trend is puck luck. Their home PDO (shooting percentage plus save percentage) at home is .986, compared to .999 on the road. The big gap here is their save percentage: at home it’s 91.4%, while it’s 92.9% on the road. That’s a big enough gap to explain much of their macro results gap. There’s barely any difference in team shooting percentage.
How do things look on a player level?

Forwards

Player
Overall
Home
Away
Gaudreau
14 G / 33 A / 47 P
11 G / 16 A / 27 P
3 G / 17 A / 20 P
Tkachuk
19 G / 28 A / 47 P
10 G / 12 A / 22 P
9 G / 16 A / 25 P
Lindholm
25 G / 21 A / 46 P
10 G / 8 A / 18 P
15 G / 13 A / 28 P
Monahan
17 G / 23 A / 40 P
9 G / 14 A / 23 P
8 G / 9 A / 17 P
Backlund
10 G / 21 A / 31 P
2 G / 10 A / 12 P
8 G / 11 A / 19 P
Ryan
10 G / 18 A / 28 P
5 G / 9 A / 14 P
5 G / 9 A / 14 P
Mangiapane
10 G / 11 A / 21 P
3 G / 5 A / 8 P
7 G / 6 A / 13 P
Lucic
6 G / 10 A / 16 P
2 G / 6 A / 8 P
4 G / 4 A / 8 P
Dube
5 G / 8 A / 13 P
3 G / 3 A / 6 P
2 G / 5 A / 7 P
Frolik
5 G / 5 A / 10 P
3 G / 2 A / 5 P
2 G / 3 A / 5 P
Bennett
5 G / 4 A / 9 P
4 G / 2 A / 6 P
1 G / 2 A / 3 P
Rieder
4 G / 5 A / 9 P
2 G/ 3 A / 5 P
2 G / 2 A / 4 P
Jankowski
5 G / 2 A / 7 P
1 G / 0 A / 1 P
4 G / 2 A / 6 P
Rinaldo
3 G / 2 A / 5 P
1 G / 0 A / 1 P
2 G / 2 A / 4 P
Czarnik
2 G / 1 A / 3 P
2 G / 0 A / 2 P
0 G / 1 A / 1 P
Quine
1 G / 0 A / 1 P
0 G / 0 A / 0 P
1 G / 0 A / 1 P
Robinson
1 G / 0 A / 1 P
1 G / 0 A / 1 P
0 G / 0 A / 0 P
Johnny Gaudreau has three goals on the road (and 11 at home). Meanwhile, Mikael Backlund, Elias Lindholm and Andrew Mangiapane are much more offensively productive away from the Saddledome.

Defenders

Player
Overall
Home
Away
Giordano
5 G / 22 A / 27 P
3 G / 14 A / 17 P
2 G / 8 A / 10 P
Andersson
4 G / 14 A / 18 P
2 G / 6 A / 8 P
2 G / 8 A / 10 P
Hanifin
5 G / 12 A / 17 P
3 G / 6 A / 9 P
2 G / 6 A / 8 P
Brodie
1 G / 15 A / 16 P
0 G / 5 A / 5 P
1 G / 11 A / 12 P
Hamonic
3 G / 9 A / 12 P
2 G / 3 A / 5 P
1 G / 6 A / 7 P
Kylington
2 G / 3 A / 5 P
1 G / 1 A / 2 P
1 G / 2 A / 3 P
Stone
2 G / 3 A / 5 P
0 G / 2 A / 2 P
2 G / 1 A / 3 P
Davidson
0 G / 0 A / 0 P
0 G/ 0 A / 0 P
0 G / 0 A / 0 P
Yelesin
0 G / 0 A / 0 P
n/a
0 G / 0 A / 0 P
Not a lot of weird results here, though TJ Brodie leading in road production and Rasmus Andersson having the same statline on the road as Mark Giordano is an interesting look.

Goalies

Player
Overall
Home
Away
Rittich
22 W / 2.87 / .909
9 W / 2.99 / .901
13 W / 2.78 / .915
Talbot
8 W / 2.57 / .924
4 W / 2.78 / .917
4 W / 2.31 / .933
Both goalies perform better on the road to non-trivial degrees. It’s unclear precisely why that is.