Post-Game Talk: Mrazek has 3 syllables in his name, Wings scored 3+ goals, Half Life 3 Confirmed

[HockeyinHD]

Higher degree than what? Any other puck battle win. Give me some evidence to support that concept.

That kind of research doesn't exist, at least that I've ever seen... so if the entirety of this discussion can only proceed under the aegis of explicit datasets, we've reached your stop.

If you're still on the train, let's go a few stops further.

When a player wins a puck battle, what does that mean, exactly? IMO, 95% of the time when a player 'wins' a puck battle he's in an effectively impactless position on the ice. The player he just 'beat' is usually right there on him, another player is very often within 3 feet (especially if this is a defensive zone battle), and another puck battle is ready to commence in around a billionth of a second.

"Winning" a contested puck battle rarely secures the kind of clear possession of the puck a faceoff win does. Now to be fair there are lots of mostly uncontested puck battles, ones where there's only one forward up or its the end of a shift or whatever. In those cases yes, a team can win a puck battle (these always happen when the recovering team is in the defensive zone), wheel out, and proceed up ice.

Compare that to an o-zone faceoff win. The puck comes back, goes out to a dman with space and position to make a relevant scoring play.

The net effect, IMO, is that it very often takes 3 or 4 or 5 successive successful puck battles to generate the same kind of positive offensive stance a team can create by winning 1 faceoff, in terms of position, spacing, placing, and angle.

You think teams know when their opposition has a faceoff percentage of 48% and intentionally create more offensive zone faceoffs? That's an absurd idea to me and in no way think teams force lower quality shots for a 52% chance of getting the puck back again.

They know when they have players and lines out there with questionable faceoff performers. So they will counsel those lines to play differently. At least, they will if they aren't abject fools.

 

[Brandel*]

That kind of research doesn't exist, at least that I've ever seen... so if the entirety of this discussion can only proceed under the aegis of explicit datasets, we've reached your stop.

If you're still on the train, let's go a few stops further.

When a player wins a puck battle, what does that mean, exactly? IMO, 95% of the time when a player 'wins' a puck battle he's in an effectively impactless position on the ice. The player he just 'beat' is usually right there on him, another player is very often within 3 feet (especially if this is a defensive zone battle), and another puck battle is ready to commence in around a billionth of a second.

"Winning" a contested puck battle rarely secures the kind of clear possession of the puck a faceoff win does. Now to be fair there are lots of mostly uncontested puck battles, ones where there's only one forward up or its the end of a shift or whatever. In those cases yes, a team can win a puck battle (these always happen when the recovering team is in the defensive zone), wheel out, and proceed up ice.

Compare that to an o-zone faceoff win. The puck comes back, goes out to a dman with space and position to make a relevant scoring play.

The net effect, IMO, is that it very often takes 3 or 4 or 5 successive successful puck battles to generate the same kind of positive offensive stance a team can create by winning 1 faceoff, in terms of position, spacing, placing, and angle.



They know when they have players and lines out there with questionable faceoff performers. So they will counsel those lines to play differently. At least, they will if they aren't abject fools.

I'll be honest, I'm not interested in continuing this discussion. There is evidence regarding the impact of faceoffs and their influence on shot attempts. I have presented/linked some of it and I have little left to add since this will clearly continue to go back and forth without new content being discussed. You're using your intuition and describing situations where winning a faceoff adds value to the team. Not much I can respond to, because you're right it does add value. Just not as much as your intuition thinks. There is literally data and analysis out there proving this to be true.

But I will add that it's not exclusive to puck battles (I should have mentioned this, but basically any situation where the puck changes possesion) but what you do when the puck is on your stick. Ie. dumping the puck in, turning the puck over, losing a race to a free puck, being in position to pick up a missed shot or rebound, or a puck off a skate, body or stick. Not exclusive to puck battles in the corner, since that seems to be what you had in mind.

Think about every time Jonathan Ericsson puts the puck off the glass and out in our own zone or how many loose pucks the other team picks up in our zone, or how few times he takes the puck away through stick check, blocked shot, hit etc. These are all things that have a substantially larger impact on a game than winning/losing a faceoff. In one shift he may do these things 3-5 times. That's one player on the ice of 10. There may have been (likely wasn't, since most shift changes are on the fly) 1 faceoff during his shift, but the amount of times puck possession changes or could have changed may be 10 times for all players during a 1 minute period, where there's only a (estimating) 75% chance of a faceoff during the same period.

 

[Flowah]

That's all pretty speculative. From what I can see winning a puck battle often results in outright possession. At least, more than just 5% of the time. (If you need exaggerated hyperbole, maybe rethink your position)

And winning a faceoff isn't all that clean a lot of the time.

The net effect, IMO, is that it very often takes 3 or 4 or 5 successive successful puck battles to generate the same kind of positive offensive stance a team can create by winning 1 faceoff, in terms of position, spacing, placing, and angle.

If we use your numbers which you seem to admit are pulled out of a smelly region. If you don't think it's dubious to suggest that 95% of puck battles lead to nothing well..... we've reached your stop.

 

[TheOtherOne]

True, obviously certain faceoffs are very important, same as certain puck battles are very important. Tie game 30s left, obviously the stakes are higher between losing and winning a draw. Can you elaborate on everything bolded? Where do you have this info and how is Glendening 90%? He's a career 51% faceoff guy. LG is a 51% this season in the DZ. 177W - 170L. You are using intuition as your argument then making numbers up to help support it?

Here's a link where you can see that even though Glendening is >50% in faceoff wins, he allows more shots against following a faceoff than league average. Even though he's winning the faceoff more often than not, he's still allowing more shots than someone who would win 50% of the draws.

I'm talking about looking at specific types of faceoffs. Play around with this.
Overall, FO% goes from about 35 to 60% at the extremes. More realistic is 40-55%. But now look at Dzone FO%. Now we have players close to 90%. Paul Gaustad has won 194 of his last 214 Dzone FOs. Glendening is not far behind, #4 on the list with 177 wins out of 203. Now you can cite his 53.9% overall and say statistically FOs don't matter. But if you have a Dzone faceoff with a minute left and all your guys are exhausted and all they need to do to secure a win is clear the zone, you put Glendening out at the dot and that's about as close to a sure thing as you are ever going to get in sports.

EDIT: bonus fact: Last year Glendening won 80% of the 300 Dzone faceoffs he took.

 

[Brandel*]

I'm talking about looking at specific types of faceoffs. Play around with this.
Overall, FO% goes from about 35 to 60% at the extremes. More realistic is 40-55%. But now look at Dzone FO%. Now we have players close to 90%. Paul Gaustad has won 194 of his last 214 Dzone FOs. Glendening is not far behind, #4 on the list with 177 wins out of 203. Now you can cite his 53.9% overall and say statistically FOs don't matter. But if you have a Dzone faceoff with a minute left and all your guys are exhausted and all they need to do to secure a win is clear the zone, you put Glendening out at the dot and that's about as close to a sure thing as you are ever going to get in sports.

EDIT: bonus fact: Last year Glendening won 80% of the 300 Dzone faceoffs he took.

Yeah those numbers are wrong. Can't trust NHL.com for stats.

Paul Gaustad is 28-161 in OZ, but is 194-20 in the DZ.

There are some good ones on there. Craig Smith 32-0 in OZ, 1-64 in DZ! Why is Laviolette letting him take all these DZ draws!

This is accurate:

http://faceoffs.net/stats/faceoff-percentage?zone=def
http://faceoffs.net/stats/player-faceoff-splits?player=luke-glendening

 

[Pavels Dog]

Yea I am curious about this PDO stat.

I have seen it said that it always regresses to the mean, which makes sense in a simplistic picture.

But couldn't it also be true that a player with a very good shot or vision sets up higher quality scoring chances so the goalie is less likely to make a save on the same number of shots?

And couldn't it also be that if a player is aggressive enough and quick enough, the opposition never has the time and space to put together high quality scoring chances, so when they do get a shot off it is more likely to be an easy save?

If these could be true, then maybe PDO is more than just luck?

I think it's still going to be hard for any 1 player to have such an impact on the entire 5-man unit any time he's on the ice. I mean is Larkin really that dominant defensively that he gets the goalies to play at a .950+%, and is Sheahan so bad defensively that the goalies play at a .900%?

I think Sheahan just by looking at his play this year has also seemed to be very unlucky. He'll have a strong game and somehow end up with 0 points and -2.

 

[CanadaIsIrrelevant]

Heaton - how do you get Mrazek to three syllables?

Isn't it only two: Mra-zek or am I missing something?

Or do you say Muh-ra-zek?

 

[Heaton]

Heaton - how do you get Mrazek to three syllables?

Isn't it only two: Mra-zek or am I missing something?

Or do you say Muh-ra-zek?

I gotta think of creative titles bro

 

[SpookyTsuki]

Heaton - how do you get Mrazek to three syllables?

Isn't it only two: Mra-zek or am I missing something?

Or do you say Muh-ra-zek?

It goes both ways

 

[Sentinel]

It's two syllables. /discussion

 

[TheOtherOne]

Yeah those numbers are wrong. Can't trust NHL.com for stats.

Paul Gaustad is 28-161 in OZ, but is 194-20 in the DZ.

There are some good ones on there. Craig Smith 32-0 in OZ, 1-64 in DZ! Why is Laviolette letting him take all these DZ draws!

This is accurate:

http://faceoffs.net/stats/faceoff-percentage?zone=def
http://faceoffs.net/stats/player-faceoff-splits?player=luke-glendening

Okay, how do you know which numbers are wrong and which are right?

 

[Flowah]

Okay, how do you know which numbers are wrong and which are right?

Because there's no way on god's green earth Glendening won 80% of all his d-zone faceoffs. That's an incredible number.

 

[obey86]

Because there's no way on god's green earth Glendening won 80% of all his d-zone faceoffs. That's an incredible number.

I remember them saying something like that on the Red Wings broadcast a few weeks ago too FWIW.

 

[Ezekial]

It goes both ways

Mrazek goes both ways??


I say Mra-zek, but Ma-ra-zek is acceptable in my book. I wanna hear him say it. I'm not used to saying Tomash for all of them yet.

 

[SpookyTsuki]

Mrazek goes both ways??


I say Mra-zek, but Ma-ra-zek is acceptable in my book. I wanna hear him say it. I'm not used to saying Tomash for all of them yet.

He probably never will cause he's not babcock

 

[SpookyTsuki]

Because there's no way on god's green earth Glendening won 80% of all his d-zone faceoffs. That's an incredible number.

Maybe he's just incredible on face offs

I know a way to tell. What was drapers

 

[Ezekial]

Master of MS Paint