2015-16 NHL schedule: Flyers again have some of the league’s easiest travel

Yet again, the Philadelphia Flyers have some of the easiest travel in the NHL.

According to the annual Super Schedule over at On The Forecheck, the Flyers will travel the fifth-least amount of miles in the NHL in 2015-16, just 34,811 in total. By comparison, the San Jose Sharks lead the league and will travel 50,362 miles next season. Only four teams will travel less distance than the Flyers: Buffalo, Toronto, Pittsburgh and Detroit.

Philadelphia will travel 3,539 miles more than they did in 2014-15, however. Last year they travel just 31,272 miles, which was easily the fewest in the league.

The Flyers’ location in the mid-Atlantic certainly benefits them, and every team in the Metropolitan Division has that same benefit. Seven of the eight teams in the Metro are in the bottom-10 in mileage, with the exception being the Carolina Hurricanes, who are pretty geographically isolated by East Coast standards.

The Flyers have the luxury of traveling by train to games against four of their division rivals: Washington, New Jersey, the Rangers and now the Islanders. The Flyers used to fly to games on Long Island, but they’ll probably just take Amtrak now since the team is in Brooklyn.

One trade off of the easy travel is typically a high amount of back-to-back games, but relatively speaking the Flyers are getting off easy on that front as well. The Flyers will play 15 back-to-backs in 2015-16, which is still a high number, but less than seven other teams in the league. Columbus plays the most back-to-backs in the NHL with 18.

Here’s the full chart, via OTF:

And here’s the full Flyers schedule, complete with distance between games: