Article: Losing Faceoffs Looked Like Minnesota's Fatal Flaw. Why Isn't It For the Panthers?

[Tony Abbott]

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[Protec]

Florida has obviously been playing very good hockey. They're getting performances from every part of their team and they have a Cup winning coach. Toronto looked past them and it allowed Florida to capture even more momentum after having beat Boston. They have a belief in themselves along with their goalie and run, it's made them successful.

The Wild have never been able to generate or capture any momentum. In the past when teams like LA or Ottawa went deep they were riding a wave they generated for themselves. MN has only done that once when Bruno was leading the team and they beat Roy and the Avs.

[Sviginak]

Yeah, I mean the odds are not in your favor if you lose a lot of face offs. But as the article states there are ways to overcome those odds and no doubt Dallas had some puck luck handed to them by the Wild that won them a game the Wild could have won. We need to be healthy and stay healthy going into the play offs the next two years to have a good chance of making it past round one, plain and simple. Year two we should have the opportunity to pick up players with term left on their contract that some teams can’t afford. I hope Billy is planning for it.

[mnfaninnc]

While the stat seems to be black and white and concrete, I'd argue it is not. There's quite a difference between clean wins and contested wins. Clean wins, typically are way more dangerous. On the wins on the PP that resulted in the quick goals, those were clean wins by Dallas, quickly moved passes and boom, back of the net. We faired much better with contested wins (or losses in our case).

So, faceoff %, just deals with wins and losses. I wouldn't mind being a 43% team if 33% of that were clean wins and only 10% were contested, and the opponents only had 20% clean wins and 37% were contested wins. But, you never hear about that type of distribution because it doesn't make for good tv stats and columns, it's too complex. I guess that's why +/- has been so maligned. So, faceoff % is a simple summary that we can look at for a ballpark number, but to really get the full picture, we'd need to dive in deeper.

Now, based upon that, I'd argue from the eye test that we are losing a lot more faceoffs clean than we are winning. To me, it seems close to a 2/1 margin. And, on top of that, when we win them, we tend to turn it over quicker than our opponents due, specifically the opponents in the top 10 of the league. 

When it came on the PK, it was bingo-bango-bongo-back of the net. You could argue that the PK never had time to set up. But, if you're consistently getting owned in the dot, that's not an excuse, you need to plan for that scenario, and I think this is what Tony's getting at. It's more than just faceoff losses. If a successful kill is dependent on the 1st faceoff win, a coin flip, then what do you have? There's a lot more here than just faceoffs. Now, when we went on that streak in March, we won a lot of 1st faceoffs on the kill. We also had our full killers that were good units, and knew where each other was going to be, Johansson didn't have that same cohesion as a late add. Duhaime/Dewar worked together just fine.

I do think that there was a combination of problems with those quick goals. 

1. Faceoff is lost
2. Forwards don't get to their lanes
3. Defenders can't defend front of net because they're too small/weak

I believe Spurgeon-Brodin and Dumba-Middleton were the normal pairs, and Faber with his 2 NHL games of experience became 1 of those guys. In this scenario, really only Middleton has the size/strength to defend this, and he was in the box sometimes. Brodin and Spurgeon have exceptional sticks, but when it comes to boxing out, they are at a disadvantage. Dumba was just small even though he plays bigger than he is. We may have had a better showing had we still had the Cole-Soucy pairing on the back end. We may also have missed Merrill's play on the PK.

We also need to give Dallas some credit on this, they knew how and where to attack. Evason and the ST coach never adjusted. This is why I'm hoping for brand new assistants this year. We've got to get our STs up to par, and really need an expert in both on the bench. Do we have room for 4 guys back there? We need a forward coach and defense coach too. Maybe the ST guy and trainer can hang out just inside the tunnel? We have a huge problem making adjustments and this needs to be addressed!

[jabuyer]

Great analysis Tony.  The talking heads love easy stats without analyzing if they mean anything.

 

Hockey is a game where statistics tend to lie the most.

[Protec]

^^^
 

I think the truth is found using all the information. These numbers are good but also when you look at the situations there’s things that are noteworthy that cannot be quantified with numbers. For example Stone played on the Ottawa team that went deep before losing to Pittsburgh and he was getting big goals. The same player keeps ending up back in the Conference finals each year seems like. Likewise, Tkachuk has been that way for Florida. Hintz did it to the Wild but Vegas has been able to shut him down the way #97 has been somewhat ruled out in series. The other thing is the goaltending. Oettinger wasn’t so much better than Gustavsson but the Wild couldn’t get the key goals when needed and they lost Game 4 in a way that sucked the life out of them rather than giving them a springboard to launch from. Those are the intangibles of hockey playoffs that you need to find. Every year the Cup winning team has a similar recipe of elements. One is a good roster and GM who has setup the group to win. The other is a coach who gets the most from his group while gaming against the other team’s coaches. Finally are the exceptional performances delivered by the spotlight players. Every single Cup team you can find examples of this. The teams that don’t have the recipe or find the ingredients lose the big cook-off. 
 

You might make a great batch of Chili that delivers heartburn and farts with the top of the class but only one can win the prize.😋