Is your favorite team playing the Habs soon? It’s better if it’s on a Friday. If you’re a Habs fan you would hope the team only plays on Thursdays. Why? The Habs’ worst win percentage is when game day is Friday. Their best win percentage comes on Thursdays.
I’ve assembled the win percentages for each team, by day of the week. The numbers cover all games from the 2003-2004 season all the way up until the October 27th games played in this season. This represents ~715 games of data for each club.
As a lifelong Habs fan I was certain the team lost more often on Saturdays than any other day of the week. I felt tortured week after week while watching them lose on Saturday nights. They seemed to try and lose specifically on that day, in any number of ways, on a nationally televised broadcast. Sitting with popcorn in hand and friends over to watch the game, I blamed it on the infamous Montreal nightlife. The players’ minds were elsewhere, thinking of post-game festivities. That’s hogwash of course, and the numbers confirm it. Their 49.5% win percentage on Saturdays is no worse than other days of the week.
Some things I’ve discovered.
- Toronto has played 0 home games on a Sunday in the last 10 seasons.
- Toronto has only played 1 Friday home game in the last 10 seasons. Montreal has played 2. These are the result of maintaining the tradition of Saturday games in the Canadian markets.
- Highest total (Home and Road) winning percentage? Detroit on Wednesdays. 66.0% via 68 wins in 103 Wednesday games.
- Highest Home winning percentage? Excluding Toronto (1 win in only 1 game on Friday) and Montreal (2 wins in only 2 Friday games) it would be Anaheim on Mondays. 76.7% via 23 wins in 30 Monday games.
- Highest Road winning percentage? Boston on Thursdays. 66.7% via 24 wins in 36 Thursday games.
- Lowest total (Home and Road) winning percentage? Edmonton on Tuesdays. 32.0% via 41 wins in 128 Tuesday games.
- Lowest Home winning percentage? St. Louis on Wednesdays. 27.3% via 3 wins in 11 Wednesday games.
- Lowest Road winning percentage? Columbus on Mondays. 19.0% via 4 wins in 21 Monday games.
Number crunchers rejoice!
Overall, the numbers are hard to digest. I’m posting them all here for someone else to get more insight than I’ve provided above. Please share any interesting findings in the Comments section.
Below you can find 3 large tables with the day of the week data for Total (Road & Home) games (Table 1), Home only games (Table 2), and Road only games (Table 3). The number of games, number of wins, and winning percentage are available for each day of the week, for each of the 30 teams.
Table 1 of 3. Total (Home & Road) Win Percentages by Day of the Week
Scroll left and right using the slider at the bottom of the table to be able to see all data in the table. 15 teams are displayed for easier viewing and the other 15 can be viewed by selecting ‘Next’ at the bottom-right of each table. All columns of data are sortable by clicking on the column header.
[table id=237 /]
Table 2 of 3. Home Win Percentages by Day of the Week
Scroll left and right using the slider at the bottom of the table to be able to see all data in the table. 15 teams are displayed for easier viewing and the other 15 can be viewed by selecting ‘Next’ at the bottom-right of each table. All columns of data are sortable by clicking on the column header.
[table id=238 /]
Table 3 of 3. Road Win Percentages by Day of the Week
Scroll left and right using the slider at the bottom of the table to be able to see all data in the table. 15 teams are displayed for easier viewing and the other 15 can be viewed by selecting ‘Next’ at the bottom-right of each table. All columns of data are sortable by clicking on the column header.
[table id=239 /]