While compiling the attendance numbers I got to wondering how the team has performed in front of big and small crowds.  That then morphed into how the team has played at home on the whole.  What follows is an amalgamation of these thoughts.  Past precedent is not a pure predictor of pending production but I thought it would be interesting to take a deeper dive into how the Thrashers have fared at home since the lockout. 

Atlanta’s overall home record: 92-72-18

2005-06 through 2008-09:  84-65-15

This season:  8-7-3

I actually have to admit that I was a little surprised at how well the Thrashers have done at Philips especially considering they were doormats in the 2007-08 and 2008-09 seasons.  While it appears you have just about a 50/50 chance of seeing a Thrashers win if you’re heading to the Bulb the team is not engaged in an encouraging trend:

2005-6:  24-13-4

2006-7:  23-12-6

2007-8:  19-19-3

2008-9:  18-21-2

Does it make a difference to the team if there is a big crowd or not?  It’s a sports cliché that players ride on the emotion of the crowd to spur them to victory.  Can this theory be proven?  I wanted to take a look at how the team performed when the barn is full as well as when the crowds are a huge disappointment, less than 70% capacity, fewer than 13,000 fans.

There have been 30 sell out crowds of 18,545 or more since the players returned to the rinks in 2005-06.  The Thrashers are 14-13-3 during these contests.  Slightly worse than their winning percentage overall (92/182- 51% :  14/30- 47%).

At the other end of the spectrum when the Thrash play to little more than the organist, 27 games with crowds <13K, their record is 14-11-2.  Slightly better than overall (14/27 - 52%).

You'd think it would be in the teams best interests if the folks just stayed at home?  However, when we look at big crowds that fall just shy of stuffed, it appears as if the team performs much better.  They’ve played 27 times with house between 90-98% full.  Their record is 18-6-3.  Seems to me that the organization should start turning folks away as we approach 18,545.

What has history told us about performance by month or day of the week?

Considering our remaining schedule looks like this:

Sun      Mon     Tue      Wed      Thu     Fri        Sat

Jan                               3                      3                      1                                 

Feb                              1                                              1

Mar      2          1          4                      3          1          1

Apr                              1                                              1

A further dig into the numbers to show prior results matched up to our remaining schedule:

Historical January results:

Tuesday:  3-3-0

Thursday:  0-3-2

Saturday:  1-1-0

Historical February results:

Tuesday:  1-1-1

Saturday:  3-2-0

Historical March results:

Sunday:  3-0-0

Monday:  4-0-0

Tuesday:  1-2-0

Thursday:  6-1-0

Friday:  3-3-0

Saturday: 2-1-0

Historical April Results:

Tuesday:  0-2-0

Saturday:  6-0-0

Where do you think the home record will end up?