The home advantage from an individual team perspective

Previous research on the home advantage has focused on the home winning percentage of entire leagues as the outcome of interest. The purpose of the present paper was to examine the home versus away records of individual teams in order to more fully describe team performance outcomes in relation to game location. Archival data from 20 seasons (1974–1993) of professional ice hockey were utilized. Over the total 20-year period, a home-game winning average of 52% was present within the league. However, when the records of individual 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 winning percentage differential was consistent across teams regardless of team quality. A small percentage of teams were also found to have a home disadvantage in their regular season play. It was suggested that future research efforts to explain the home advantage should examine game location from the perspective of individual teams as well as league averages.