Through 31 games of the 2024-25 season, the Calgary Flames have emerged, simultaneously, as two things.

They are the fifth-best home team in the National Hockey League by record. They are the 26th-best (or seventh-worst) road team in the NHL by record.

They’ve had a remarkably consistent lineup. They’ve stayed generally pretty healthy. But they’re a team that finds ways to win at home, and finds ways to lose on the road. And even their underlying metrics – the numbers that are supposed to shed light on why their home and road splits are so odd – are equally perplexing.

Let’s delve into what’s so weird about the Flames’ performances this season, focusing primarily on their defensive and goaltending numbers. (Unless otherwise noted, we’re using Natural Stat Trick’s data here.)

So here’s how it’s supposed to work: at home, your team has last change. Because your team has last change, they should have better defensive metrics because you can get your shutdown aces out against the other team’s top players.

But that’s not what’s happened for Calgary.

All three defensive rates – expected goals against, scoring chances against and high-danger chances against – are lower on the road, which suggests that opponents are getting less-frequent, lower-quality looks when the Flames are away from home. One big difference, though: team save percentage at five-on-five is 94.9% at home… and 90.6% on the road.

The Flames leave the ‘Dome, and their goalies stop 4.3% fewer shots… on less frequent, lower quality chances. Collectively, the Flames are stopping 13.17 goals above expected at home at five-on-five and allowing 3.56 more goals than expected on the road in the same situation.

Dan Vladar’s home save percentage is .885. His road save percentage… is .885. At five-on-five, he’s .919 at home and .915 on the road. Dustin Wolf’s home save percentage is .949. His road save percentage is .862. At five-on-five, he’s .967 at home and .891 on the road.

Vladar has saved 1.85 goals above expected at five-on-five at home and 0.02 on the road. Wolf has saved 11.32 goals above expected at five-on-five at home and allowed 3.58 above expected on the road.

Whichever way you slice it, Wolf has wild swings in performance at home and on the road. Vladar is pretty consistent. (One area where Vladar is consistently worse than Wolf regardless of location: shorthanded save percentage, with Wolf 13.8% better at home and 11.9% better on the road.)

Finally… you wouldn’t expect a team’s penalty kill metrics to be all that different between home and road, right? The home team has last change, but they’d match their power play to the opponent’s penalty kill in the same way, so there would be (at best) minor variation

Across the board, the Flames are worse at suppressing opposition power plays on the road.

And as noted: they’re not getting a ton of saves. Their goalies stop 81.7% of shots at home and 77.5% on the road. The combination of rough goaltending and leaky defence on the PK has led to the Flames having the worst road penalty kill in the NHL (killing 69.2% of opposition power plays). It improves to 25th at home (74.4%).