Faceoffs

[Hit the post]

If Manny wasn't injured in the 2011 playoffs, we would have had a better chance in Boston. Manny was a machine in the faceoff circle, but we didn't have a faceoff specialist against Bergeron.

Losing Hamhuis hurt us more. Not that Manny wasn't missed.

 

[Diamonddog01]

Losing Hamhuis hurt us more. Not that Manny wasn't missed.

Disagree, not that the loss of Hamhuis also didn't play a role. I think losing Manny had a ripple effect in which Hank and Kes had to play more, and tougher minutes which led to them being broken by the time the finals rolled around. And of course all those spoodfed ozone starts during the regular season led to huge production from the top two lines, and we were offensively inept against Boston. With a healthy Malhotra that presumably would've lead to better health for Sedin and Kesler and more scoring in the finals.

It was a combination of factors but I've always felt that Malhotra's injury was the most significant that eventually lead to the cup loss. Luongo's Boston meltdowns were also huge factor imo.

 

[I am toxic]

Disagree, not that the loss of Hamhuis also didn't play a role. I think losing Manny had a ripple effect in which Hank and Kes had to play more, and tougher minutes which led to them being broken by the time the finals rolled around. And of course all those ozone starts led to huge production from the top two lines, and we were offensively inept against Boston. With a healthy Malhotra that presumably would've lead to better health for Sedin and Kesler and we may have scored a lot more in the finals.

It was a combination of factors but I've always felt that Malhotra's injury was the most significant that eventually lead to the cup loss. Luongo's Boston meltdowns were also huge factor imo.

Came here to say this. Beat me to it. Cur!

 

[Melvin]

Melvin, honest question, is this data including neutral zone faceoffs? If so, I think that the analysis is less useful than excluding neutral zone faceoffs.

Is there a plausible explanation for why they should be excluded? Is there a reasonable reason to believe that a team could have more skill in zone faceoffs or that skill in zone faceoffs specifically is predictive?

I agree that OT should be excluded, however I would point out that winning the initial puck drop in OT is (contrary to my previous point about neutral zone faceoffs) huge.

Possible. I'll look into this later.

Having said that, in the discussions up-thread it seems there may be some agreement that a 60%+ could result in a few goals over the season and an additional point or two in the standings - the 87-83-40 record you show seems consistent with that.

I really doubt those 4 wins in 210 games is in any way statistically significant, and my cutoff was 65 not 60.

 

[I am toxic]

Is there a plausible explanation for why they should be excluded? Is there a reasonable reason to believe that a team could have more skill in zone faceoffs or that skill in zone faceoffs specifically is predictive?

Faceoffs are taken by a handful of players of varying abilities (win %). The coach will select different players for different situations.

Regardless, all the data confirms that winning more faceoffs is not a bad thing.

 

[Hit the post]

Disagree, not that the loss of Hamhuis also didn't play a role. I think losing Manny had a ripple effect in which Hank and Kes had to play more, and tougher minutes which led to them being broken by the time the finals rolled around. And of course all those spoodfed ozone starts during the regular season led to huge production from the top two lines, and we were offensively inept against Boston. With a healthy Malhotra that presumably would've lead to better health for Sedin and Kesler and more scoring in the finals.

It was a combination of factors but I've always felt that Malhotra's injury was the most significant that eventually lead to the cup loss. Luongo's Boston meltdowns were also huge factor imo.

We were hurt throughout the lineup. Except for goaltending (other than Luongo's fragile mental makeup.

But yeah, not finishing off teams like the Hawks made those series wins like phyrric victories.

 

[Melvin]

Faceoffs are taken by a handful of players of varying abilities (win %). The coach will select different players for different situations.

Regardless, all the data confirms that winning more faceoffs is not a bad thing.

I can look at it later but I've posted before the goal scoring rates after winning an offensive zone faceoff are not higher than overall average goal scoring rates.

It's just.. Not very meaningful, no matter how much we want it to be, all of the data suggests its not really a stat even worth tracking, and we only track it because of tradition and ease of data capture.

 

[I am toxic]

I can look at it later but I've posted before the goal scoring rates after winning an offensive zone faceoff are not higher than overall average goal scoring rates.

It's just.. Not very meaningful, no matter how much we want it to be, all of the data suggests its not really a stat even worth tracking, and we only track it because of tradition and ease of data capture.

I think it matters. Maybe I am not understanding Shuckers 2012 analysis indicating it can be worth a win (SJ) or a loss (EDM) over the course of a season, or Vollman saying Bergeron was netting Boston several more goals per season.

Not as much as goaltending, systems, the 5 fundamental skills, but still important and I will continue to work with my centres on it once they have worked on systems and fundamental skills to the point that dimishing returns kick in and spending a minute or so each practice on faceoffs is - in my mind - warranted.

 

[Melvin]

I think it matters. Maybe I am not understanding Shuckers 2012 analysis indicating it can be worth a win (SJ) or a loss (EDM) over the course of a season, or Vollman saying Bergeron was netting Boston several more goals per season.

Not as much as goaltending, systems, the 5 fundamental skills, but still important and I will continue to work with my centres on it once they have worked on systems and fundamental skills to the point that dimishing returns kick in and spending a minute or so each practice on faceoffs is - in my mind - warranted.

I mean. It should go without saying that by "it doesn't matter" I mean "at the nhl level, the difference in skill among centres at that level doesn't appear to add up to anything particularly meaningful."

Among six year olds or something, I don't know.

 

[Melvin]

Alright it took me a bit to get back to this but, I looked at the data with neutral zone faceoffs removes and got 479 games where a team won 65% of the in-zone draws. The results:

Overall record, again this is teams that won a substantial majority of the faceoffs that were held deep in the zone: 147-149-78. Almost perfectly even, and you can see from the above plot that there is no clear trend where the greater the majority the better the team does. Even when the teams are winning 75% of the deep draws, they are .500 overall.

If you want to look at an example of one of the dots to the right, see this game. Our beloved Canucks won 34 of the 43 zone faceoffs, and 62% of the faceoffs overall, and lost 3-1.

Here is another way of looking at it.

The average GF/game per team in my sample was 2.77 over 5,000+ games.

There are teams that managed to win 80% of the O-Zone draws they took, including this amazing game where the Leafs won every single Offensive Zone faceoff - 13-for-13.

In the 93 games where teams won 80% of their O-Zone faceoffs, teams averaged 2.79 goals per game. Again this is compared to the 2.77 Goals/game overall average over 5,000 games.

Dropping the games into buckets of FO% and excluding buckets with tiny samples, it looks like this

OZFO	Team-Games	GF/GP
30-40%	504	2.772
40-50%	1620	2.784
50-60%	3068	2.729
60-70%	3799	2.765
70-80%	2037	2.844
80-90%	502	2.841

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Graphically:

So maybe, maybe there's a small boost here in the games where teams are winning 60%+ of their O-Zone faceoffs, they are scoring slightly more goals but it's such a small difference that it could just be noise.

I dunno; I've looked at this every way I can think of but willing to tackle it from other angles if anyone has suggestions. If anything, I think even the posters here who were downplaying FO% were still probably overrating it by saying that in some hypothetical extreme case there could be a significant advantage. I am not sure that there is.

 

[bandwagonesque]

What's the actual definition of a faceoff win? One's team being the first to take possession of the puck afterward, no matter where and no matter how much time has elapsed since the puck drop?