I received two questions from BenM last week about faceoffs. Since the Rangers scored the Game Seven overtime winner off a faceoff win, it makes sense that people would be looking at faceoffs as a whole again, so let’s get into it.
Q: How much of AV’s line changes can be attributed to faceoffs?
I’m guessing you mean the shuffled lines, moving Kevin Hayes to wing and Dominic Moore to the 3C spot. In this regard, I don’t think this was in regards to faceoffs, but more about how to deal without Mats Zuccarello. The lines were juggled after Game Three against Washington, but the Rangers played well in most of those games. They also played well in the final four games of the series.
If you’re referring to in-game decisions about where he deploys his lines, I think that has more to do with the location of the faceoff and the Washington skaters on the ice. In the late game, a guy like Dominic Moore will probably get more ice time, as he’s the only guy that can be relied upon to consistently win faceoffs.
One item of note: Very rarely are faceoffs won clean. Wingers getting to the puck are what win/lose faceoffs for the most part. On the Derek Stepan winner, it was Jesper Fast who got in and chipped the puck back to Keith Yandle to start the play.
Q: What percent of goals regular season/playoffs come within 30 seconds of a faceoff?
This I honestly don’t know. I went into detail on this at the beginning of the season, so you should check out that entire post. It takes about 76.5 more faceoff wins to yield a single goal differential. So the grand effect of winning a faceoff isn’t that big. At the individual event level, faceoffs are certainly important. Time, score, and situation all play a role in the importance of the individual faceoff. But when you start accounting for all faceoffs for comparison’s sake, the effect isn’t big.
It’s worth noting that the 76.5 number comes from goals scored within 20 seconds after winning a faceoff. It’s not the 30 seconds you were asking about, but 20 seconds is still up there.
But not all faceoffs are created equal. The above numbers are for even strength faceoffs. There is a much larger effect when the faceoff is on special teams. A player creates a single goal differential after winning 40 more faceoffs than lost while on the powerplay. That number drops to 35 when it’s an offensive zone faceoff on the powerplay.
This isn’t an exact science, since real-time tracking varies from arena to arena, but it should shed some light on faceoffs.
As always, if you have any questions you want to be a part of the mailbag, use the tool on the right to shoot me an email. I will include them in the mailbag.
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