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***sköldpaddor*** · 11-11-2021, 02:25 PM

Deep Dive #2: NL/ANC and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Commute

I will preface this by saying that I am not trying to trivialize any team’s travel distances, I simply picked the two teams with the most obviously outstanding isolation from the rest of the league because it seemed like a more interesting angle. When you look at Anchorage and St John’s (according to the Berserkers info page, that is where their arena is located) on a map, they are so far up and out there that you distinctly notice the curvature of the earth when you slide over there from most of the other locations that have a team. (Sorry guys, the earth is not flat). Clearly other teams have some long travel distances too, especially when they are coming to see one of these two teams. But between these two, who play each other four times this season, the distance is pretty impressive. Obviously no one is driving that distance (for one, you physically can’t, because of the whole thing where they aren’t connected to the same land mass), but also, even if you were leaving from one of the mainland cities in Newfoundland over in that area, it would take over four days of straight driving, so that’s right out.

Flying is the obvious (and really the only realistic) option. Now, the shortest commercial flight I could find between these cities was an eighteen hour option with three stops along the way. Absolutely brutal. Who wants to haul a bunch of hockey players and their equipment on an eighteen hour journey with three stops to lose the adult children and inevitably some of their stuff (really how likely do you think it is that the airline will execute that many luggage transfers between planes with no errors) somewhere along the way in an airport Montreal and Denver or whatever? No one.

Luckily, I am going to assume that both of these teams have a private travel arrangement (hopefully something cool with their logo on the tail). A Google search tells me that the actual direct flight time between the two cities is almost eight hours. Well, that’s still a significant flight, but it’s definitely better than eighteen hours with layovers. Eight hours one way isn’t the most heinous flight time you can find in the world. But let’s look a little closer.

Newfoundland and Anchorage, as I mentioned, play each other four times this season (two home games and two road games for each of them). Now, the thing I haven’t mentioned (which I’m sure many of you have already noticed) is that every single one of these travel times I’ve mentioned is only one way. Every time Newfoundland and Anchorage play each other, one of these teams has to fly eight hours, play a hockey game, then fly eight hours back home. That’s sixteen hours of travel time MINIMUM to play one hockey game. And that’s not even including the drive from the airport to the arena and the assorted hotel situations. I think it’s only humane to let the guys have a night of sleep in a hotel before they have to fly back, but that won’t always be possible because sometimes they’ll presumably have back to back games and have to be somewhere else the next day. If they were really lucky, their next game would be in a city that was closer, so they wouldn’t have to go all the way home, but a quick look at the schedule shows that both of Newfoundland’s road games in Anchorage are followed by games back at home. Anchorage has it a little better - their trips to Newfoundland are followed by visits to Colorado and Detroit.

In conclusion, the Berserkers and Armada both have my profound sympathy as they navigate this situation. If I were running the players’ union, I would demand that the schedule allow for more lengthy road trips closer to those locations - let Newfoundland go play Vancouver and Kelowna or some of the other western teams on those trips out there, let Anchorage face Québec City and Maine, perhaps, before or after they visit Newfoundland (or maybe Carolina, because that flight is really not significantly shorter either but that’s for another article). Please, someone think of the hockey players. They must be so tired.

**leafs1997** · 11-12-2021, 12:10 AM

@sköldpaddor GRADED! +5 TPE

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