Worst Faceoff Teams since 1997-98

Here are the ten-worst faceoff teams since the NHL started recording data in 1997:

Atlanta, Florida and Pittsburgh have figured very prominently at the bottom of this list.  Let's look at these teams a bit more closely.  First, the disaster that was the Tampa Bay Lightning:

On the top end, this wasn't the worst faceoff team, but from the 6th center down, Tampa was a colossal disaster, winning just 38% over more than 1200 draws.

And last year's Phoenix catastrophe:

Here the problem was regular centers Olli Jokinen and Kyle Turris.  The solution?  Get rid of both of them - and Phoenix's faceoff percentage the next season was over 50%.

The Florida Panthers had a more focused problem:

Viktor Kozlov is bad at faceoffs, but Oleg Kvasha's 28.4% winning percentage is the worst of any regular faceoff taker in our entire database.

Last year' Islanders were terrible at faceoffs, among many other things:

Here, the Islanders were incredibly hurt by injuries.  Mike Sillinger got hurt just a few games into the season; the gap between him and Josh Bailey was massive, costing the Islanders 200 faceoff wins.  Of course, that would have vaulted them up roughly one inconsequential point in the standings.