You knew I would do that? Good. Why didnt you want to answer that? Its a basic question. Dowd has become one of the best faceoff guys in the league but he is off his numbers because he has been out of the lineup a lot. Eller is a good 50%+ face off guy. Kuzy stinks and always has. He has also taken almost 25% more face offs than anyone else. So he has an oversized effect on the overall average, McMichael is terrible as you would expect a rookie to be and he has taken the 4th most face offs. There you have the problem with the numbers.
I suppose its reasonable to blame Kuznetsov's career face of problems on Forsythe. Is that how you see it?
That certainly accounts for the bad numbers this season. The improvement to 22nd last season would appear to be a direct result of Peca's involvement. Seasons before that 28th and 31st. Ouch.
I'm not going to pin all of the blame on Forsyth when Kuznetsov himself blew off faceoffs as if they were a win some, lose some kind of thing. But if a coach is responsible for a specialized aspect of the game and the results aren't there, it seems like maybe that coach isn't as effective as:
a) he used to be
b) he could be
c) other coaches who coach the same specialized aspect
My entire statement comes down to the same thing: I believe the team could - and should - be better at faceoffs, and I believe the team's PP is boring, predictable, and easily defended. I'm not the only one who feels that way (about the PP). Even Alan May spoke about it
after the game against Chicago.
I'm genuinely surprised they haven't tried more passing, speed, player movement to generate better scoring chances. It's not like it comes at the detriment of other aspects. Better PP isn't going to mean worse PK, etc.
As I said a few days ago - if they are simply waiting for their regular guys to return and expecting things will automatically improve, then so be it. Hopefully that works. If it doesn't, or if one of these key players is out for a long period of time,
they will be in trouble, and could be left scrambling to change things up - something they could have been doing while those key players were out, since their PP has become among the worst in the league. The current PP has been the same for so long
that they can revert to it with their eyes closed anyway (if trying something different yields the same poor results).
As things stand, the PP isn't costing them games so far in the regular season, so it may not be considered an issue and maybe they genuinely feel it will all just start clicking when they get the regular guys back.
But if they enter the playoffs (yes, a LONG way away, but eventually we'll reach that time of the year) and it's still ineffective and easily defended, it will almost certainly cost them big time. And it will be too late to try and fix it.
Penalties will come at a premium and special teams need to capitalize on the opportunities. Tampa are known for their exceptional PP and PK and it's played a big part in them winning back to back Cups.