CrashingTheGoalie

by Ron Spence

A century ago teams had to travel a long way to  compete for the Stanley Cup.

They traveled from Ottawa, Montreal or Toronto to Vancouver or Seattle – by train.

This week two teams had to travel a record distance to play for the Kelly Cup – the ECHL finals.

The Carolina Stingrays and the Anchorage Aces traveled 4,517 miles for their game six contest tonight.

They traveled – by plane – from Charleston to Philadelphia to Phoenix to Anchorage (Last season, teams had traveled 4,444 miles from Trenton, N.J. to Anchorage, and the year before 4,396 miles from Duluth, Georgia to Anchorage.).

More significant than the mileage, is the 4 time zones difference between the two cities. That’s what’s the most tiring, the number of time zones that you cross.

Compare this with the KHL, where Dinamo Riga and Amur Khabarovsk have to travel 3690 miles and 8 time zones (According to the IIHF: “The flight distance between Riga and Khabarovsk is 6,150 kilometers (or 8,533 km by train) and eight time zones.” ).

Dinamo Riga (in Latvia) is the blue bubble on the left and Amur Khabarovsk is the blue bubble on the right.

NHL teams don’t have to travel as far as the KHL teams, nor do they have to cross as many time zones.

They only cross 3 time zones – max – and the distance between Vancouver and Miami is only 2814 miles, and between L.A. and Boston is only 2589 miles.