Team Faceoff Percentage since 1997-98
by Hawerchuk on Mar 29, 2010 9:00 AM EDT
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PrintSomething I want to make clear: several people have noted that the difference between the best faceoff teams and the worst faceoff teams isn't that large, perhaps at most three wins in a single season. The correlation between faceoff percentage and winning percentage isn't particularly high either, and faceoffs "explain" at most 10% of winning. So does this mean that faceoffs aren't significant?
No way. Other than goaltender career save percentage, tell me another basic tracked statistic that predicts 10% of winning and represents a true talent that doesn't regress very heavily to the mean. Hits? Nope, zero correlation with winning. Giveaways, takeaways - not so much. PP% and PK%? Huge regression to the mean. Shots for and shots against? They're not basic statistics - they're driven by other more basic events on the ice that we don't track.
As we try to figure out what players are worth, we're going to need to collect a lot more real-time data. There are a great many significant things that don't make a 3-win difference in hockey; we shouldn't ignore them.
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It's quite clear that there are some organizations in the NHL that care about faceoffs, and some that don't. Detroit obviously does - they have the highest winning percentage since the league started keeping stats, and they're the only team to win more than 50% of their faceoffs every season for the last 12 years. Some of that is good luck: the star players they've drafted also happen to be great faceoff takers, unlike Pittsburgh, for example, who have two terrible faceoff men in Jordan Staal and Evgeni Malkin. But some of that is clear strategy: after Todd McLellan took over the San Jose Sharks coaching job, San Jose's faceoff percentage jumped to be tops in the league.
Here are the team faceoff percentages since 1997-98:
| Team | WPCT | MAX | MIN | >=50% | YRS |
| DET | 52.6 | 54.5 | 50.1 | 12 | 12 |
| WAS | 51.9 | 55.4 | 48.8 | 10 | 12 |
| CAR | 51.5 | 55.8 | 48.5 | 8 | 12 |
| DAL | 51.4 | 55.4 | 47.8 | 9 | 12 |
| ANA | 50.9 | 55.5 | 48.2 | 7 | 12 |
| TOR | 50.9 | 52.9 | 49.7 | 9 | 12 |
| NYR | 50.8 | 53.8 | 47.7 | 8 | 12 |
| STL | 50.8 | 52.2 | 48.8 | 9 | 12 |
| PHI | 50.7 | 54.9 | 47.1 | 6 | 12 |
| BOS | 50.6 | 53.2 | 48.4 | 7 | 12 |
| MON | 50.5 | 53.4 | 48.9 | 4 | 12 |
| LOS | 50.2 | 52.4 | 47.2 | 7 | 12 |
| EDM | 50.1 | 54.1 | 46.1 | 7 | 12 |
| VAN | 50.1 | 52.0 | 46.8 | 7 | 12 |
| NJD | 50.1 | 52.1 | 48.2 | 7 | 12 |
| NAS | 50.1 | 53.7 | 46.8 | 5 | 11 |
| SAN | 50.0 | 55.5 | 47.7 | 5 | 12 |
| CAL | 49.9 | 53.5 | 46.2 | 7 | 12 |
| CLB | 49.8 | 52.7 | 47.6 | 5 | 9 |
| NYI | 49.6 | 52.2 | 45.8 | 5 | 12 |
| CHI | 49.5 | 51.7 | 46.8 | 5 | 12 |
| PHO | 49.4 | 53.4 | 45.4 | 5 | 12 |
| OTT | 49.2 | 52.2 | 47.1 | 4 | 12 |
| COL | 49.2 | 51.8 | 47.0 | 4 | 12 |
| ATL | 48.9 | 53.6 | 46.2 | 5 | 10 |
| BUF | 48.7 | 50.6 | 47.1 | 3 | 12 |
| TAM | 48.5 | 51.9 | 44.8 | 4 | 12 |
| PIT | 47.9 | 49.7 | 46.0 | 0 | 12 |
| MIN | 47.9 | 52.6 | 45.8 | 1 | 9 |
| FLO | 47.6 | 51.0 | 45.1 | 2 | 12 |
I'm surprised that Minnesota's as bad as they are - they were run by defense-first coach Jacques Lemaire for their first eight seasons, and it's only this year that they've won more than half of their faceoffs. You'd think winning faceoffs would make playing defense easier.
The number 1 and 2 teams since the lockout are predictable, but after that, it's a bit of a free-for-all of good and bad teams:
| Team | WPCT |
| DET | 53.1 |
| SAN | 51.8 |
| ATL | 51.8 |
| NAS | 51.7 |
| BOS | 51.0 |
| CLB | 50.9 |
| WAS | 50.9 |
| OTT | 50.8 |
| TOR | 50.7 |
| CAR | 50.6 |
| ANA | 50.6 |
| NYR | 50.3 |
| STL | 50.2 |
| EDM | 50.1 |
| TAM | 50.0 |
| VAN | 49.9 |
| MON | 49.9 |
| CAL | 49.8 |
| NJD | 49.6 |
| DAL | 49.5 |
| PHO | 49.4 |
| FLO | 49.3 |
| CHI | 49.1 |
| LOS | 49.1 |
| NYI | 48.9 |
| PHI | 48.7 |
| BUF | 48.6 |
| MIN | 48.5 |
| COL | 48.1 |
| PIT | 47.5 |
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At least the Red Wings current captain hasn’t taken any faceoffs over that time.
As a former center, I’m pretty surprised at how infrequently good faceoff takers are appreciated. You’re not going to find a more staged, set moment on the ice, and no part of the play/plan can be made without a good, clean faceoff win. I’d be interested to see if there was a correlation between high FO win % and increased time in the offensive zone…
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by Bettman's Nightmare on Mar 29, 2010 9:17 AM EDT reply actions
FLO? The woman from the Progressive Insurance ads? I’m not surprised.
by DoctorMyBrainHurts on Mar 29, 2010 9:56 AM EDT reply actions
I’d be curious about selection bias issues. For example, a team is more likely to win a faceoff when on the PP, so if a team consistently has more PP’s than average, they should have a better faceoff % than average. I’d think we’d need to control for that and perhaps a few other things (icings, faceoff locations?, etc).
by sunnymehta.com on Mar 29, 2010 11:13 AM EDT reply actions
I didn’t find that PP or location had that much of an impact – you’d have to be a team that took a lot of penalties, had a good PK, didn’t get many PPs and was good on the PP to skew things.
I think we can at least say that Pittsburgh doesn’t care about faceoffs, but Detroit and SJ do.
And now that I think about it, I can’t remember if this is ES faceoffs only. crap.
Sunny is right. Teams on the power-play win 54% of their faceoffs; HUGE when you consider the team-to-team variation is so much lower, though I’ve never understood why. It doesn’t have a huge impact on the team numbers, for the reasons you mentioned, but it does beg the question of why players win faceoffs more than 50% of the time. I always assumed teams sent out better faceoff men on the PP, but the difference is too large for that to be the reason.
I imagine the reason teams win more faceoffs on the power play is because of faceoffs where both players tie each other up and a third player takes control of the puck. The power play team has an extra player who would be able to do this.
by PuckStopsHere on Mar 29, 2010 3:16 PM EDT up reply actions
Most individuals who take a lot of draws tend towards PP FO% >> EV FO % >> SH FO%. For those players who take a disproportionate number of draws on one special team over the other, this will have the effect of inflating or depressing their overall rate. e.g. John Madden’s expected faceoff % would be < 50%, while Sidney Crosby’s would be >50%.
The fact that Scott Nichol and David Steckel are 1-2 in the NHL despite taking ~100 and ~300 more SH than PP faceoffs respectively is both surprising and impressive, and speaks to their real dominance in the circle.
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by Bruce McCurdy on Mar 29, 2010 10:01 PM EDT up reply actions
Usually you put out one of your best faceoff guys for the PK, too, so that wouldn’t explain it. Having the extra guy makes a pretty big difference when both teams are scrambling to win the faceoff. I bet the disparity is even greater for 5-on-3.
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