the Importance or lack there of faceoffs in NHL Hockey.

[Bad_BOI_pete]

5 hours ago, erkayloomeh said:

Right on. 

But here's a thought. Prior to Bo's next contract let's promote the idea that face-off don't matter. 

Boy, those face-off guys sure fight hard for that puck(pointlessly)don't they? 

hockey is a game of edges, but adam gelndnning the leading faceoff man won 62% of faceoffs last year but only had a 44% corsi.

He was widely available for a playoffs rental, yet he wasn't traded. hmmmm, I wonder why.

my guess is it doen't matter what your faceoff% is as long as your contributing in the 80% of the game which isn't factored in with faceoffs.

 

this is from 2015 SI article

 

Florida Panthers center Aleksander Barkov has taken 755 face-offs this year, and has won 46.9 of them, while sporting a Corsi-for percentage over 56. Five centers in the NHL have taken at least 500 face-offs and have better possession numbers than Barkov.

Ranking a few spots below him in terms of possession is Montreal Canadiens center Lars Eller, with a Corsi-for percentage of 55.83. Eller has won 303 face-offs against 347 lost, a 46.6 percentage.

And the list goes on. Behind Eller in terms of puck possession and centers is Riley Nash of the Boston Bruins: A Corsi rating of 55.26 percent, with 209 face-offs won, and 212 lost. Down a few spots sits Ottawa Senators center Derick Brassard, another possession driver and more-often-than-not face-off loser.

Somehow, it appears these players are managing to maintain puck possession over large swaths while also losing face-offs.

There's also the other end of this spectrum, a center like Steve Ott, who has won 58 percent of his face-offs, and has a Corsi rating below 45 percent. Matt Duchene of the Colorado Avalanche has won over 62 percent of his face-offs this year, with a 48.57 Corsi-for percentage to go along with that. And the Anaheim Ducks' Antoine Vermette has also won over 62 percent of his face-offs, and also has had a negative puck possession impact.

 

[Bad_BOI_pete]

32 minutes ago, Gollumpus said:

Cool stats.

 

As you're talking stats:

 

1.) how many teams have won 60% of the face offs during any given season? This seems a rather high mark to use for your thesis.

2.) why are you using 60% as your cut off point? How do the numbers change if they drop to 55%, or even 50%?

 

I suppose that since face off wins are rather irrelevant, statistically speaking, why should a team put any effort into winning them?

 

                                                               regards,  G.

this a as per game stat. of the games combined over TWO seasons that have a team win over 60% only win 51.6% of those games.

 

there are 60 faceoffs in a game 60*.6= 6 faceoffs extra. This happens every day in the league.

 

as for relevancy, this statement is silly. All aspects of the game are relevant, hockey is a game of edges. But a player that can cycle and play keep away or defend well is 80% more relevant than just some 4th liner who can win a couple faceoffs.

 

You need people than can PLAY, faceoffs are just a mini game like shootouts. 

Edited July 18, 2021 by Petey_BOI

[Gollumpus]

1 hour ago, Petey_BOI said:

this a as per game stat. of the games combined over TWO seasons that have a team win over 60% only win 51.6% of those games.

 

there are 60 faceoffs in a game 60*.6= 6 faceoffs extra. This happens every day in the league.

 

as for relevancy, this statement is silly. All aspects of the game are relevant, hockey is a game of edges. But a player that can cycle and play keep away or defend well is 80% more relevant than just some 4th liner who can win a couple faceoffs.

 

You need people than can PLAY, faceoffs are just a mini game like shootouts. 

Cool.

 

So, about those teams which have won 60% of the face offs over their entire season? And while you're at it, how many teams have won 60% of their face offs over consecutive seasons? What is the correlation to their regular season and playoff results?

 

What are the results (regular and post season) for teams which have won less than 60% of their face offs, say 45%?

 

                                                                 regards,  G.

[Bad_BOI_pete]

45 minutes ago, Gollumpus said:

Cool.

 

So, about those teams which have won 60% of the face offs over their entire season? And while you're at it, how many teams have won 60% of their face offs over consecutive seasons? What is the correlation to their regular season and playoff results?

 

What are the results (regular and post season) for teams which have won less than 60% of their face offs, say 45%?

 

                                                                 regards,  G.

your ridiculous, no one has ever won 60%. and my stats don't and have ever stated so. 

 

why would i do any of this work for you anyways? have i got you on the fence? if so I suggest you look it up yourself, i'm not your butler G

[Gollumpus]

11 minutes ago, Petey_BOI said:

your ridiculous, no one has ever won 60%. and my stats don't and have ever stated so. 

 

why would i do any of this work for you anyways? have i got you on the fence? if so I suggest you look it up yourself, i'm not your butler G

Well, the "60%" I got from your comments. If you aren't using those numbers, why include them? Is it to make your argument look better?

 

Why should you do any of this work? Answer, to back up what you are preaching. If you can't, or won't, do some of that simple legwork then this puts your position in doubt. What is the real world vs the numbers comparison?

 

                                                                      regards,  G.

[Bad_BOI_pete]

1 minute ago, Gollumpus said:

Well, the "60%" I got from your comments. If you aren't using those numbers, why include them? Is it to make your argument look better?

 

Why should you do any of this work? Answer, to back up what you are preaching. If you can't, or won't, do some of that simple legwork then this puts your position in doubt. What is the real world vs the numbers comparison?

 

                                                                      regards,  G.

crap on top of crap.

 

I have no reason to backup my stats because they hold true to what they are.

 

I'm not going to repeat myself for the third time.

 

enjoy living in a world where faceoffs matter.

[Bad_BOI_pete]

11 minutes ago, Gollumpus said:

Well, the "60%" I got from your comments. If you aren't using those numbers, why include them? Is it to make your argument look better?

 

Why should you do any of this work? Answer, to back up what you are preaching. If you can't, or won't, do some of that simple legwork then this puts your position in doubt. What is the real world vs the numbers comparison?

 

                                                                      regards,  G.

you pissed me off enough to do something for you.

 

the top 7 playoff faceoff performer where

vegas

winnepeg

boston

carolina

NYI

Florida

Toronto

 

 

Tampa Bay ranked 11th and montreal 9th beat 6/7 of the top faceoff winners.

[Bad_BOI_pete]

19 minutes ago, Gollumpus said:

Well, the "60%" I got from your comments. If you aren't using those numbers, why include them? Is it to make your argument look better?

 

Why should you do any of this work? Answer, to back up what you are preaching. If you can't, or won't, do some of that simple legwork then this puts your position in doubt. What is the real world vs the numbers comparison?

 

                                                                      regards,  G.

in 2019/2020 Dallas ranked 11th and Tampa bay ranked 18th out of 24

 

Tampa beat

8th place columbus

6th place boston

13th place NYI

11th Ranked Dallas

 

Dallas beat

18th ranked Calgary

12th ranked colorado

22nd ranked Vegas

 

Vegas Ranked 22nd beat the 2nd overall canucks

arizona ranked 21st beat the first overall ranked Nashville

 

 

 

 

[Bad_BOI_pete]

31 minutes ago, Gollumpus said:

Well, the "60%" I got from your comments. If you aren't using those numbers, why include them? Is it to make your argument look better?

 

Why should you do any of this work? Answer, to back up what you are preaching. If you can't, or won't, do some of that simple legwork then this puts your position in doubt. What is the real world vs the numbers comparison?

 

                                                                      regards,  G.

in 2019

 

Boston ranked 4th with 51.9% and STL 9th with 50%

STL beat

Winnepeg 13th

Dallas 6th

Sanjose 7th

Boston 4th

 

Boston beat

Toronto 13th

Columbus 15th

Carolina 10th

 

1st calgary lost to last 16th colorado

2nd nashville lost to 7th Dallas

3rd islanders lost to tenth calgary

 

[Psycho_Path]

4 hours ago, Petey_BOI said:

and your stats don't prove anything at all, I broke down my stats down to possesion time and shots on goal.

 

the fact that philli and vancouver ranked 2nd and 5th and TBL and MTL ranked 16th, 24th and BOS 1st And NYR last. and the fact that the #6 team won a total of 118 extra faceoffs over the entire season and the #24 team won 130 less.

 

there were around 104000 faceoffs last year. 120 goals within 10 seconds of a faceoff 120/31= about 4 goals per team due to faceoff wins

for boston 8*.55=4.4

for NYR 8*.44=3.5

the difference between the 2 is 0.9 goals or about 1 point in the standings

 

 

"there were around 104000 faceoffs last year. 120 goals within 10 seconds of a faceoff 120/31= about 4 goals per team due to faceoff wins"

This assumes that a goal scored after 10 seconds of a faceoff win didn't come because of the possession that resulted from the faceoff, which is pretty dumb. An offensive zone faceoff win leading to a possession that ultimately results in a goal is a significant faceoff win, regardless of how long it takes to score the goal afterwards. Even the momentum that can be generated from the puck possession of a faceoff win can have an impact on a goal being scored by the following line that comes out on the ice during a change.

 

The other problem with using generalized stats is it doesn't take into account quality of competition on the ice, both for and against. Having a 4th liner with really good faceoff % doesn't necessarily mean much if they're predominantly on the ice against the other team's 3rd/4th line, but makes more of a difference when against the opposing team's top 2 lines, though even that statement has flaws if the team's strategy is for the 4th line to win the faceoff, transition the puck up the ice, and make a quick change to one of the top lines (while the other team still has their bottom pairing defense or forwards on the ice). There's so many other factors relevant to how useful being good at faceoffs are. Where they're the least relevant is games where they don't happen much, which isn't very frequent.

 

Personally I think Rick Blight's post is the most relevant to whether faceoffs are a useful stat though. Outliers are not a good base for an argument.

[JM_]

21 hours ago, Petey_BOI said:

So I have argued for a while know why faceoffs are not very important to the outcome of a game. I will show why this is true and how the aquisition of a poor faceoff performer like Dickinson is not significant in any considerable amount to our success as a club.

 

in 2012 seingtheice presents some data . https://seeingtheice.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/the-importance-of-faceoffs/

 

1. A study shows that there is about 60 faceoffs per game

2. one faceoff is equal to about 5 seconds of possession time

 

Lets do the math. a team that wins 55% of the faceoffs would win 33/60 or about 30 seconds. An average team will take roughly 30 shots and control the puck for 1/2 of the game. so 30 minutes or 1800 seconds + 15 = 30/1815= or about 0.8% more possesion time. 15 seconds *101.08% = 1/4 a shot * 82 games = 20.7 shots

the average shot has 8.5% chance of going in * 20.7 shots = 1.75 goals over the course of a full year

 

when these extra 1.75 goals happen might not even be significant to the result of the game. end result =near zero significance

 

Sports illustrated came out with an article in 2015 regarding faceoff importance, there view was that there was no long term gains from being a good faceoff team

https://www.si.com/nhl/2017/03/03/illustrated-review-importance-nhl-faceoff

 

Here is a major argument they present.

 

Comparing two seasons they found that a team that wins 60% of the faceoffs wins 51.6% of those games.

 

82 games * 0.516 = they will win on average 0.3 more games due to faceoffs or about a little less than 1 point in the standings.

 

So when we analyze Dickinsons face off game he took about 300 faceoffs last year winning 46.23% or 22 faceoffs lost

22 faceoffs * 5 seconds of possession = 110 seconds or about 2 shots over the year. this equates to about 0.17 goals against per the total year.

 

 

Big math time= 300/5100 = 5.9% which is how many faceoffs dickinson took on the dallas team. even if he took 50% of the faceoffs and the other centers won 50%

it would only result in the team losing 5100*.484 losing 164 faceoffs over the year 

164*5 seconds= 820 seconds or 14 minutes or 14shots or 1 goal against over the entire year

 

so don't worry be happy.

 

further noted it has been shown that Faceoffs are not important to NHL hockey, but for amateur hockey the small bonus gained from possesion is magnified. So if you find that these results are misleading they mean very little towards amateur hockey where there is significant more scoring.

 

 

 

 

 

read the articles, and I fail to see the depth of analysis needed to make the pronouncement that face offs don't matter.

 

Do you think a team could win a game winning zero face offs? Could a team win losing all PK face offs? 

 

All the generalized numbers tell us is good teams with enough depth can overcome being a poorer face off team some of the time. Thats important, but that doesn't lead to the conclusion that face off percentage doesn't matter. 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 19, 2021 by Jimmy McGill

[Bad_BOI_pete]

8 minutes ago, Psycho_Path said:

"there were around 104000 faceoffs last year. 120 goals within 10 seconds of a faceoff 120/31= about 4 goals per team due to faceoff wins"

This assumes that a goal scored after 10 seconds of a faceoff win didn't come because of the possession that resulted from the faceoff, which is pretty dumb. An offensive zone faceoff win leading to a possession that ultimately results in a goal is a significant faceoff win, regardless of how long it takes to score the goal afterwards. Even the momentum that can be generated from the puck possession of a faceoff win can have an impact on a goal being scored by the following line that comes out on the ice during a change.

 

The other problem with using generalized stats is it doesn't take into account quality of competition on the ice, both for and against. Having a 4th liner with really good faceoff % doesn't necessarily mean much if they're predominantly on the ice against the other team's 3rd/4th line, but makes more of a difference when against the opposing team's top 2 lines, though even that statement has flaws if the team's strategy is for the 4th line to win the faceoff, transition the puck up the ice, and make a quick change to one of the top lines (while the other team still has their bottom pairing defense or forwards on the ice). There's so many other factors relevant to how useful being good at faceoffs are. Where they're the least relevant is games where they don't happen much, which isn't very frequent.

 

Personally I think Rick Blight's post is the most relevant to whether faceoffs are a useful stat though. Outliers are not a good base for an argument.

sure like there hasn't been countless studies showing how irrelevant the faceoffs matter.

 

but rick blight and his "stats' he shown that don't reflect how faceoffs contribute to any of these wins.

 

so far i have collected years of data from articles that get there data from ACTUAL studies. (You know where professionals get paid to collect data and make observations)

 

Further, I have shown that in the playoffs (what matters most) There is even LESS revelance to faceoffs than the regular season.

 

Believe what you want, People that don't accept change are bound to end up on the wrong side of history.

[Bad_BOI_pete]

7 minutes ago, Jimmy McGill said:

read the articles, and I fail to see the depth of analysis needed to make the pronouncement that face offs don't matter.

 

Do you think a team could win a game winning zero face offs? Could a team win losing all PK face offs? 

 

All the generalized numbers tell us is good teams with enough depth can overcome being a poorer face off team some of the time. Thats important, but that doesn't lead to the conclusion that face off percentage doesn't matter. 

 

 

 

 

OMG, really.

 

I'm not saying putting a 10% guy on the dot is what we should be doing. honestly you insult me.

 

you read the article's and twist my words and just disregard the article's like PROOF Doesn't matter.

 

you argue like a trump or covid non believer.

 

if you don't want to believe proof, good for you. But don't rain on my parade.

[JM_]

2 minutes ago, Petey_BOI said:

OMG, really.

 

I'm not saying putting a 10% guy on the dot is what we should be doing. honestly you insult me.

 

you read the article's and twist my words and just disregard the article's like PROOF Doesn't matter.

 

you argue like a trump or covid non believer.

 

if you don't want to believe proof, good for you. But don't rain on my parade.

whoa there, ease back a bit. No one is insulting you personally. 

 

You raised a point, posted some articles, and I read them. I don't see the evidence for what you stated, there just isn't any detail to different aspects of a game to support the concept. 

[Bad_BOI_pete]

 

to the people that came into this article with a blinds eye this be you.

[Bad_BOI_pete]

Just now, Jimmy McGill said:

whoa there, ease back a bit. No one is insulting you personally. 

 

You raised a point, posted some articles, and I read them. I don't see the evidence for what you stated, there just isn't any detail to different aspects of a game to support the concept. 

ok what do you disagree with specifically?

[JM_]

1 minute ago, Petey_BOI said:

ok what do you disagree with specifically?

"So I have argued for a while know why faceoffs are not very important to the outcome of a game."

 

Pretty much this ^. 

 

What the articles describe is some generalized outcomes. We need a specific in-depth look at key situations e..g, PK situations. 

 

All it really tells us is a team with say 49% face off percentage can overcome the deficit with good depth that can require possession some other way. But that face off gap of a few points isn't the same thing as saying face offs aren't important. If there weren't, teams with face off percentages far lower could win more games and they don't. 

[I.Am.Ironman]

2 hours ago, Petey_BOI said:

you pissed me off enough to do something for you.

 

the top 7 playoff faceoff performer where

vegas

winnepeg

boston

carolina

NYI

Florida

Toronto

 

 

Tampa Bay ranked 11th and montreal 9th beat 6/7 of the top faceoff winners.

I don't know if using Tampa Bay to support your thesis is all that strong of a position. They are the best team in a decade - the counter argument is that they have more than enough strength in all other areas of the game to compensate. Further, the difference between 9th or 6th may be a few tenth's of a percent. Not significant. But we all know how important a defensive zone faceoff is in the closing minutes of a game. We saw it with Manny Malhotra.

 

11 out of the top 15 faceoff teams (73%) made the playoffs this year. imo that's a pretty strong case that they play a large role in team success, most of the time. The teams in the bottom half were TB (16th), VGK (20), PIT (21), WAS (22), MTL (25). I think the argument can be easily made that those teams, minus MTL, all are strong enough in other areas to compensate for being weaker at faceoffs. The Canadiens are the outlier.

[RWMc1]

I think that in crucial situations we will have BO, JT, and Beags to take draws. Dickenson was a little over 46% so he's not as horrible as some claim.

[Bad_BOI_pete]

9 minutes ago, Jimmy McGill said:

"So I have argued for a while know why faceoffs are not very important to the outcome of a game."

 

Pretty much this ^. 

 

What the articles describe is some generalized outcomes. We need a specific in-depth look at key situations e..g, PK situations. 

 

All it really tells us is a team with say 49% face off percentage can overcome the deficit with good depth that can require possession some other way. But that face off gap of a few points isn't the same thing as saying face offs aren't important. If there weren't, teams with face off percentages far lower could win more games and they don't. 

ok wording.

 

I do believe there are critical faceoffs, some mean much more than others like the opening faceoff or neutral zone draws vs PP

 

but here is another article showing that possesion and faceoffs don't correlate. why because 80% of the game is played on the fly.

 

https://www.hockeywilderness.com/2014/11/6/7155985/faceoffs-nhl-possession-correlation-do-faceoffs-matter

 

 

but strong 5vs5 play out side the mini game of faceoffs is what wins game, there is a measurement on this and its dangerous 5v5 shot attempts or basically slot shots. montreal lead the league in 5vs5 scoring this year and TBL lead the league last year. 5vs5 scoring or prevention of scoring will lead to playoff success and it has next to nothing to do with faceoffs. Faceoffs are a mini game, that have less relevance than shootout performance in the regular season.