The home advantage from an individual team perspective

Previous research on the home advantage has focused on the home winning per centage of entire leagues as the outcome of interest. The purpose of the pr esent paper was to examine the home versus away records of individual teams in order to more fully describe team performance outcomes in relation to g ame location. Archival data from 20 seasons (1974-1993) of professional ice hockey were utilized. Over the total 20-year period, a home-game winning a verage of 52% was present within the league. However, when the records of i ndividual teams were examined, teams were found to have won 17.3% (p<.001) more games at home than away. Furthermore, the magnitude of the home/away w inning percentage differential was consistent across teams regardless of te am quality. A small percentage of teams were also found to have a home disa dvantage in their regular season play. It was suggested that future researc h efforts to explain the home advantage should examine game location from t he perspective of individual teams as well as league averages.