Face-offs are odd. They are a valued skill yet do not appear to correlate to victory.
This season I have tracked whether the team that wins a game (excluding games that went to 3-on-3 overtime or a shoot-out, as those are different animals) also led the game in face-offs, shots and hits.
My expectation was that face-offs would definitely correlate, shots might and hits would not.
In fact, through 898 games as of yesterday, none of the three markers runs in tandem with victory. The count is as follows: for hits, the winning team had the most hits 40.5 per cent of the time, fewer hits 54.4 per cent, and in the other 5.0 per cent the team tied for hits.
For shots, the respectively numbers were 46.7 per cent, 49.8 per cent and 3.6 per cent; for face-offs, 45.8 per cent, 50.1 per cent and 4.1 per cent.
Hits you can understand – you hit a guy when you don’t have the puck, and therefore are not in any position to score. Shots are surprising – you have to shoot to score, but on the other hand quality of shots matters more than the raw total, and besides, a team that is trailing will shoot more late in the game, whereas the team that is leading will often go into a defensive shell.
But the lack of pay-off for face-offs is puzzling, at first. Hockey analytics is driven by data on the importance of puck possession.
The face-off is a battle for possession, so winning it should improve your possession numbers.
The problem is that winning the face-off is usually irrelevant to possession. The centremen jab their blades at the puck and one is deemed to have won the face-off.
Then typically the puck goes skittling towards the wingers. This is where the real battle for possession begins. Most of the time the key skill is not winning the face-off but winning the aftermath of the face-off.
The face-off itself becomes an almost random event.
The idea that face-off percentage is not a key to victory is bound to meet resistance in the hockey world.
In December, Detroit media reported that the Red Wings coach, Jeff Blashill, had over the summer received an email from a stats guy who asserted that a team’s best chance at victory came if it won 49.5 per cent of its face-offs. Blashill sounded doubtful as he recounted his reaction to the email.
“If you’re 49.5 you’re perfect. If you’re 50.5 you’re not as good, so I’m not sure,” he said, as per mlive.com. “Two areas where face-offs are critical – power play and penalty kill. We’re a team that wants the puck. We don’t want to give the puck up, so starting with the puck I believe helps out. That guy didn’t.”
Why do hockey people still believe in face-offs?
Because they are absolutely right to believe that a sequence of play, and even a game, can hinge on a face-off.
Here are the three of the best examples of this I have seen this season:
- March 6, New York Islanders and New York Rangers tied late in the third. Isles’ Casey Cizikas beats Derek Stepan cleanly on the draw and pulls the puck back into open space, where Cal Clutterbuck steps in and fires the winner home before the Ranger goaltender can really react.
- December 30, Philadelphia at San Jose, face-off in the Sharks zone. The Flyers’ Claude Giroux positions his stick as if he is going to pull the puck back. Instead he shoots directly on net and catches Martin Jones off guard. Jones gets a piece of it but the puck trickles into the net.
- December 28, Los Angeles at Vancouver, Canucks on the power play, face-off in the LA zone. The Kings’ Anze Kopitar, instead of trying to get the puck to his guys, whacks it forward – that is, in the same direction as the Canucks player wants to get the puck. With their forces combined, though, the puck whizzes out past the blue line and the Canucks have to regroup.
To adapt a line from American Hustle, face-offs mean nothing until they mean everything.
rmckenzie@thenational.ae
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