Faceoff %: Most Useless NHL Statistic?

[WordsOfWisdom]

NHL Leaders in Faceoff % right now are:

 

1. Coyotes (53.9%)
2. Hurricanes (53.6%)
3. Wild (51.7%)
4. Ducks (51.4%)
5. Leafs (51.3%)

 

There is absolutely no correlation between success at faceoffs and wins, at least based on 2015-16 stats. Sure, the odd faceoff loss results in a goal. Those are the plays that people remember. However, the other 99 times out of 100 that a lost faceoff doesn't result in a goal being allowed are quickly forgotten.

 

ATTN: Glenn Healy, Craig Simpson, Greg Millen.

You guys need to find a new statistic to fawn over. The Leafs are amazing at faceoffs, and they're ranked 30th in the NHL.   

 

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

Well, Words, I wouldn't say the stat is useless.

Like most other stats, it needs to be seen in context with other things teams do.

 

When I see a high FO %, I don't necessarily think, "Oh, that team must be real good! They win most of their face offs, so they have the advantage and inside track on the W!"

All a high FO% means is that particular team is very adept at gaining possession, and usually, gaining possession more often than not, leads to getting scoring chances before the other team, rubbing away time if you are the team that has the lead late in the game, or in a PK situation, it helps kill the opposing PP by forcing the man advantage team to have take away the puck from you before they can even try to set up.

 

All those things are good, however, the problem with bottom feeder teams is that, even though they may have good possession via high FO wins, what they DO with the puck after that is what usually keeps them from ultimately winning most of their games.

 

Let's take Toronto for instance.

Now, I don't have a stat sheet in front of me, but Tor wins just over 51% of FO as a team...but what happens after that? What is their giveaway / takeaway ratio?

Do they often dump the puck in then chase...often failing to retrieve the puck once again?

If their defense and goaltending is porous, then really, the other team, even with a lowly 34% FO win and ensuing possession (made up number for the purposes of this post) can score because the Leafs are simply not good enough to stop them.

 

Kinda like a team that can outshoot another 35-20. Its great they get the high shot count, but how many of those actually got in or were high % shots to begin with? And of the 20 for the opposing team, they manage to gain the lead because most of the 20 were great opportunities they capitalized on.

 

Same with FO %, IMO.

It's a good stat to measure how well the team can take control of the play, but still, they must do other things to get that win. Simply winning the puck at the FO dot isn't going to do it.

A team with a high FO % AND has positive numbers in other areas (such as superior takeaways, shooting %, or greater scoring chances for) will likely be the team that will come out with the win. Especially if they have good defense and goaltending to back up those offensive and possession numbers.

 

Maybe those guys at HNIC go overboard with the FO numbers, but it's still a good measure of a team's ability to control play which CAN lead to wins, but not necessarily, if said team can't do much else beyond that.

 

My 39 cents.

[JagerMeister]

Faceoffs are simply a side stat for possession. Nothing else.

[JagerMeister]

26 minutes ago, WordsOfWisdom said:

NHL Leaders in Faceoff % right now are:

 

1. Coyotes (53.9%)
2. Hurricanes (53.6%)
3. Wild (51.7%)
4. Ducks (51.4%)
5. Leafs (51.3%)

 

There is absolutely no correlation between success at faceoffs and wins, at least based on 2015-16 stats. Sure, the odd faceoff loss results in a goal. Those are the plays that people remember. However, the other 99 times out of 100 that a lost faceoff doesn't result in a goal being allowed are quickly forgotten.

 

ATTN: Glenn Healy, Craig Simpson, Greg Millen.

You guys need to find a new statistic to fawn over. The Leafs are amazing at faceoffs, and they're ranked 30th in the NHL.   

 

That's what happens when you have nothing positive to say about your team, fawn over irrelevant stats.

[WordsOfWisdom]

7 minutes ago, TropicalFruitGirl26 said:

Well, Words, I wouldn't say the stat is useless.

Like most other stats, it needs to be seen in context with other things teams do.

 

When I see a high FO %, I don't necessarily think, "Oh, that team must be real good! They win most of their face offs, so they have the advantage and inside track on the W!"

All a high FO% means is that particular team is very adept at gaining possession, and usually, gaining possession more often than not, leads to getting scoring chances before the other team, rubbing away time if you are the team that has the lead late in the game, or in a PK situation, it helps kill the opposing PP by forcing the man advantage team to have take away the puck from you before they can even try to set up.

 

All those things are good, however, the problem with bottom feeder teams is that, even though they may have good possession via high FO wins, what they DO with the puck after that is what usually keeps them from ultimately winning most of their games.

 

Let's take Toronto for instance.

Now, I don't have a stat sheet in front of me, but Tor wins just over 51% of FO as a team...but what happens after that? What is their giveaway / takeaway ratio?

Do they often dump the puck in then chase...often failing to retrieve the puck once again?

If their defense and goaltending is porous, then really, the other team, even with a lowly 34% FO win and ensuing possession (made up number for the purposes of this post) can score because the Leafs are simply not good enough to stop them.

 

Kinda like a team that can outshoot another 35-20. Its great they get the high shot count, but how many of those actually got in or were high % shots to begin with? And of the 20 for the opposing team, they manage to gain the lead because most of the 20 were great opportunities they capitalized on.

 

Same with FO %, IMO.

It's a good stat to measure how well the team can take control of the play, but still, they must do other things to get that win. Simply winning the puck at the FO dot isn't going to do it.

A team with a high FO % AND has positive numbers in other areas (such as superior takeaways, shooting %, or greater scoring chances for) will likely be the team that will come out with the win. Especially if they have good defense and goaltending to back up those offensive and possession numbers.

 

Maybe those guys at HNIC go overboard with the FO numbers, but it's still a good measure of a team's ability to control play which CAN lead to wins, but not necessarily, if said team can't do much else beyond that.

 

My 39 cents.

 

   All excellent points (as usual). Hard to dispute anything you've said. 

 

I'm also wondering how much about faceoffs is a legitimate skill and how much of it is simply luck. The other aspects of the game (skating, passing, shooting, stickhandling, positioning, awareness, etc.) are all legitimate skills that can be practiced and improved. They usually lead to victory when put together in combination. However, even the best faceoff player can be routinely outmatched by an inferior one. That sort of result lends itself to randomness more than skill. It could also explain why all of the faceoff percentages are so close to 50%. At 50%, it's a coin toss. If one team led the NHL with a faceoff % of say 75%, that would be truly impressive. 

 

Meh, I'm just thinking out loud.  

 

 

 

 

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

@WordsOfWisdom

 

Well, personally, I think FO wins is a combination of skill and luck.

 

The skill part is in knowing not only who you are going to face (and their tendencies), but also your stance, your reaction time once the ref drops the puck, placement of stick and/or hands before and after the puck is dropped (does the player go right for the puck, does he tie up the other player's stick THEN go for the puck, etc), and of course body positioning.

 

The luck part may come in if the puck takes a weird random bounce after striking the ice surface, or is the more skilled player simply was not anticipating the ref to drop the puck at a given moment, while the other guy did (or he was just lucky enough to have his stick in the right place).

And you know very well, sometimes the ref doesn't drop the puck right away, much to the irritation of many players, raising the luck factor over the skill factor in those situations.

 

I never played actual ice hockey, but did play quite a bit of casual street hockey. I played center or wing, but it always amazed me whenever I took faceoffs (which I was terrible at), that even someone smaller than I was, or perhaps not even as quick, could beat me on face offs (even to this day, I am a physically 'quick' person, mind you...hehe), but then, when I thought about it, the other player, usually one with more experience playing hockey than I had, usually placed his body, hands, etc, in better positions and was usually able to either redirect or shove me to the side while he took the puck (or in street hockey the puck ball...lol).

 

I simply could not wrap my head around the proper positioning to win the puck off a draw consistently.

So yea, I would say its a combination...but I think more often than not, skill plays a very big part.

[blocker]

I dunno about about a team's face-off percentage.

 

But, I tell my kids that if they want ice time, learn how to control face-offs.  

[Podein25]

I violently disagree with the premise of the OP and much of the other nonsense postulated in this thread. 

 

If faceoffs were about luck, even partially, I wouldn't have won almost every single faceoff I took last night. I not only won 99% of them, I won them clean onto the stick of my winger or D-man. It's one of the only things in life that I was ever good at. It's not luck!!!

[WordsOfWisdom]

6 hours ago, JagerMeister said:

That's what happens when you have nothing positive to say about your team, fawn over irrelevant stats.

 

It's so true. 

 

The Leafs color commentators especially, seem to have a faceoff percentage fetish. They don't talk about anything other than faceoffs. Nothing about turnovers, hits, shots, zone time, etc..... It's just faceoffs faceoffs faceoffs. "Here's Kadri... he's 3-7 in the faceoff circle tonight." To add insult to injury, they start breaking down the faceoffs by zone! "Kadri is 3-4 on faceoffs in the offensive zone, but he's 0-3 on faceoffs in the defensive zone".  OMG! Who cares?  

[WordsOfWisdom]

3 hours ago, Podein25 said:

I violently disagree with the premise of the OP and much of the other nonsense postulated in this thread. 

 

If faceoffs were about luck, even partially, I wouldn't have won almost every single faceoff I took last night. I not only won 99% of them, I won them clean onto the stick of my winger or D-man. It's one of the only things in life that I was ever good at. It's not luck!!!

 

LOL.  Podein is awesome! 

 

It would be interesting if one could determine how faceoff wins translate into additional scoring chances and how many. Starting with the puck seems like a strong position to be in (logically) if not for the fact that it's so easy to lose the puck when you have it. Possession changes occur every few seconds.

 

In a sport like basketball, when one player has the ball, you may not get it back until they make a basket. A hockey player just can't seem to possess the puck with the same kind of "total domination" that a basketball player can possess the ball. Or so it seems. 

 

 

 

 

[JR Ewing]

Random thoughts...

 

• If faceoffs were more a matter of luck than skill, you would expect to see great differences in who are better and worse every year: a more random distribution. Instead, we mostly see the same guys in mostly the same positions year after year.
• A faceoff win leads to a bump in the number of scoring chances in about the next ten seconds after the draw, and then goes back down to average after that, so its stated importance to possession is more limited than what most would lead us to believe. In the end, there isn't really a correlation between winning faceoffs and having possession (which we can measure by how many pucks a team pushes toward the opposition goal.
• Winning a draw is *always* better than losing one, but I would be loathe to spend an inordinate amount of money on a faceoff specialist who isn't particularly good at getting the puck to move north.
• In the end, faceoff value has been a bit trumped up. The difference between a great faceoff man and an average one, over the course of 1,200 offensive draws in a season, is about 1 goal, or about 1/3 of a win. That's great, but the way the media talk about it, that's the difference each night, and not over 82 games.

 

 

[J0e Th0rnton]

14 hours ago, TropicalFruitGirl26 said:

@WordsOfWisdom

 

Well, personally, I think FO wins is a combination of skill and luck.

 

The skill part is in knowing not only who you are going to face (and their tendencies), but also your stance, your reaction time once the ref drops the puck, placement of stick and/or hands before and after the puck is dropped (does the player go right for the puck, does he tie up the other player's stick THEN go for the puck, etc), and of course body positioning.

 

The luck part may come in if the puck takes a weird random bounce after striking the ice surface, or is the more skilled player simply was not anticipating the ref to drop the puck at a given moment, while the other guy did (or he was just lucky enough to have his stick in the right place).

And you know very well, sometimes the ref doesn't drop the puck right away, much to the irritation of many players, raising the luck factor over the skill factor in those situations.

 

I never played actual ice hockey, but did play quite a bit of casual street hockey. I played center or wing, but it always amazed me whenever I took faceoffs (which I was terrible at), that even someone smaller than I was, or perhaps not even as quick, could beat me on face offs (even to this day, I am a physically 'quick' person, mind you...hehe), but then, when I thought about it, the other player, usually one with more experience playing hockey than I had, usually placed his body, hands, etc, in better positions and was usually able to either redirect or shove me to the side while he took the puck (or in street hockey the puck ball...lol).

 

I simply could not wrap my head around the proper positioning to win the puck off a draw consistently.

So yea, I would say its a combination...but I think more often than not, skill plays a very big part.

The other thing is sides and cheating faceoffs(Jumping the gun)

 

A righty taking faceoffs on a certain side while a lefty takes faceoffs on the other side based on where they will put the puck, team strategies, etc

 

And Refs rarely have more than one false start. Thornton and Pavelski effectively jump early every faceoff because even when one gets thrown out of the circle, the next guy can jump the gun relatively safely knowing the ref won't do another false start. They changed the rules a bit in the offseason to discourage it, so it is not done in every situation anymore, but they still utilize this tactic to great success. At least one of them in the last 4 years has had a faceoff win% of 56-58%. Sometimes both.

 

Not surprisingly, their line drives possession the past 4 years compared to many

 

[BluPuk]

Stats, Schmats.   

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

1 hour ago, BluPuk said:

Stats, Schmats.   

 

Who is this Schmats character?

 

What team is he on, and is his FO % really any good?

[WordsOfWisdom]

35 minutes ago, TropicalFruitGirl26 said:

 

Who is this Schmats character?

 

What team is he on, and is his FO % really any good?

 

He is line-mates with Fiddle Faddle.  

 

And his faceoff % is 50.1% in the offensive zone, 49.9% in the defensive zone, and 50.0% in the neutral zone, so he takes all of the offensive zone faceoffs on the team.   

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

3 minutes ago, WordsOfWisdom said:

 

He is line-mates with Fiddle Faddle.  

 

And his faceoff % is 50.1% in the offensive zone, 49.9% in the defensive zone, and 50.0% in the neutral zone, so he takes all of the offensive zone faceoffs on the team.   

 

Meh....sounds like a career AHL or borderline NHL guy to me.....

[WordsOfWisdom]

9 hours ago, JR Ewing said:

Random thoughts...

 

• If faceoffs were more a matter of luck than skill, you would expect to see great differences in who are better and worse every year: a more random distribution. Instead, we mostly see the same guys in mostly the same positions year after year.
• A faceoff win leads to a bump in the number of scoring chances in about the next ten seconds after the draw, and then goes back down to average after that, so its stated importance to possession is more limited than what most would lead us to believe. In the end, there isn't really a correlation between winning faceoffs and having possession (which we can measure by how many pucks a team pushes toward the opposition goal.
• Winning a draw is *always* better than losing one, but I would be loathe to spend an inordinate amount of money on a faceoff specialist who isn't particularly good at getting the puck to move north.
• In the end, faceoff value has been a bit trumped up. The difference between a great faceoff man and an average one, over the course of 1,200 offensive draws in a season, is about 1 goal, or about 1/3 of a win. That's great, but the way the media talk about it, that's the difference each night, and not over 82 games.

 

 

 

Actually that's backwards!

 

If faceoffs were a matter of pure skill, then the differences between players (and to a lesser extent teams) would follow a normal distribution (the familiar bell curve). If the outcome of a faceoff was almost entirely random, then all of the data would cluster at or around the 50% mark, indicating that it is effectively a coin toss... especially as the number of trials got large. That's exactly what we see with the team totals. I'd like to examine the player totals as well.  

[JR Ewing]

41 minutes ago, WordsOfWisdom said:

 

Actually that's backwards!

 

If faceoffs were a matter of pure skill, then the differences between players (and to a lesser extent teams) would follow a normal distribution (the familiar bell curve). If the outcome of a faceoff was almost entirely random, then all of the data would cluster at or around the 50% mark, indicating that it is effectively a coin toss... especially as the number of trials got large. That's exactly what we see with the team totals. I'd like to examine the player totals as well.  

 

Nope.

 

For starters, I was talking about players and not teams. Secondly, it's not backwards. The further removed a stat is from measuring individual skill, the more random it becomes: the number of hits a pitcher gives up per ball struck, for example. Once the ball is thrown, what happens is completely out of the hands of the pitcher, and we see that the number of hits allowed per ball in play can change dramatically on a year-to-year basis. The closer a stat is tied to skill, the more we see it repeated to within a certain amount of predictability. Good faceoff men usually have a good FOW% and poor ones usually have a bad FOW% each year, even if they change teams.

 

If it was much more random, we'd expect to see Patrice Bergeon or Ryan Kesler or Ryan O'Reilly or Boyd Gordon, for example, to have FOW% all over the map. But, we don't. If it were more random, we could reasonably expect Ryan Nugent-Hopkins to have years where he's pretty good. But, we don't. Every year, he loses more often than he wins.

[BluPuk]

@TropicaFruitGirl26 - It was a play on words of a famous Leafs manager Cliff Fletcher saying : "draft, schmaft". Need I say more?

[Podein25]

It is an odd thing that at a time when hockey is being geekified by the advanced stats movement, where they've glommed onto the idea of puck possession as a key determinant, people float the idea that faceoffs are not a good measure of that very thing.

[JR Ewing]

13 minutes ago, Podein25 said:

It is an odd thing that at a time when hockey is being geekified by the advanced stats movement, where they've glommed onto the idea of puck possession as a key determinant, people float the idea that faceoffs are not a good measure of that very thing.

 

It's only odd thing if we don't consider how often the puck changes possession in a hockey game. Winning a non-neutral zone faceoff IS a good measure of possession. For about ten seconds. In that time, more shot attempts are definitely directed towards the net, and then it drops down to normal rates.

[WordsOfWisdom]

6 hours ago, JR Ewing said:

 

Nope.

 

For starters, I was talking about players and not teams. Secondly, it's not backwards. The further removed a stat is from measuring individual skill, the more random it becomes: the number of hits a pitcher gives up per ball struck, for example. Once the ball is thrown, what happens is completely out of the hands of the pitcher, and we see that the number of hits allowed per ball in play can change dramatically on a year-to-year basis. The closer a stat is tied to skill, the more we see it repeated to within a certain amount of predictability. Good faceoff men usually have a good FOW% and poor ones usually have a bad FOW% each year, even if they change teams.

 

If it was much more random, we'd expect to see Patrice Bergeon or Ryan Kesler or Ryan O'Reilly or Boyd Gordon, for example, to have FOW% all over the map. But, we don't. If it were more random, we could reasonably expect Ryan Nugent-Hopkins to have years where he's pretty good. But, we don't. Every year, he loses more often than he wins.

 

Ah. I see. That makes sense.  

 

I lost my train of thought now....  

 

[JagerMeister]

On ‎2‎/‎15‎/‎2016 at 4:04 PM, Podein25 said:

I violently disagree with the premise of the OP and much of the other nonsense postulated in this thread. 

 

If faceoffs were about luck, even partially, I wouldn't have won almost every single faceoff I took last night. I not only won 99% of them, I won them clean onto the stick of my winger or D-man. It's one of the only things in life that I was ever good at. It's not luck!!!

I don't agree with Fanatic that you shouldn't NOT have opinions....but you can keep having your wrong opinions

[JagerMeister]

21 hours ago, WordsOfWisdom said:

 

It's so true. 

 

The Leafs color commentators especially, seem to have a faceoff percentage fetish. They don't talk about anything other than faceoffs. Nothing about turnovers, hits, shots, zone time, etc..... It's just faceoffs faceoffs faceoffs. "Here's Kadri... he's 3-7 in the faceoff circle tonight." To add insult to injury, they start breaking down the faceoffs by zone! "Kadri is 3-4 on faceoffs in the offensive zone, but he's 0-3 on faceoffs in the defensive zone".  OMG! Who cares?  

Well, what do you expect? Do you want them to discuss how much the leafs suck? Any iota of positivity to be said about the team alleviates maple leaf stress disorder temporarily...

[WordsOfWisdom]

13 hours ago, JagerMeister said:

Well, what do you expect? Do you want them to discuss how much the leafs suck? Any iota of positivity to be said about the team alleviates maple leaf stress disorder temporarily...

 

Interestingly enough.....  .......  (if they didn't work for the company that owns the Leafs) I would want them to tear a strip off the Leafs in every broadcast. They could have a special segment on everything the club hasn't accomplished recently. They should shame the club into playing better. 

 

They used to have a color commentator that told it like it is, but I'm sure he got fired for being negative. You can tell that they're being told to put a positive spin on everything. It would be funny to hear what they actually say when the mic is turned off lol.