FACEOFFS HELPING DUCKS TAKE POSSESSION OF SERIES
Goalie Talbot’s play and lucky bounces have allowed Oilers to steal two victories
Every other significant matchup is a fair fight: goaltending, power play versus penalty killing, goals for and against, coaching acumen.
But the Ducks own the faceoff dot. The Oilers are being evicted.
If faceoff winning percentage was a statistic that didn’t have any real-world value, the Oilers could shrug off the fact they have been on the losing end in all three games.
But faceoff wins, by their very definition, reward the victors with puck possession. The loser has to chase. If the teams essentially alternate roles through 60 minutes, the game takes on a balanced look. When one team, let’s call them the Ducks, holds such a major advantage in the circle over another team — we’ll go with Oilers in this case — the imbalance is obvious throughout other facets of the game.
There is no doubt the Oilers have had to chase the puck in this series, having been outgunned in the faceoff dot 119-81 through three games. That they still owned a 2-1 advantage before Wednesday’s Game 4 at Rogers Place was testament to the goaltending prowess of Cam Talbot and a couple of lucky bounces for goals.
“I think you realize more when you’re on a team that wins faceoffs how much it really pays you dividends in terms of starting with the puck and having possession,” said Andrew Cogliano, who took plenty of draws with the Oilers but moved to the wing with Anaheim and doesn’t miss the work.
“If we can start with the puck, if we can get our matchups or changes at the right time, if we can create plays that make us create pressure on the forecheck, I think it helps us. So it’s big in terms of just overall possession of the game, and I think that’s gone a long way for us this year.”
If a penalty killer wins a draw in the defensive zone, he takes valuable time off the clock and sends the other team’s power play 200 feet the other way. A clean win in the offensive zone on a power play comes back to the point for a shot on goal, and maybe a rebound, with three forwards ready to pounce.
It simply increases your chance of success, no matter the mission.
At 54.7 per cent through the regular season, the Ducks were tops on the dot in the NHL. The Oilers were dead last at 47 per cent. In the playoffs, the Ducks sat at 56 per cent through seven games, the Oilers at 44.6 per cent through nine.
Antoine Vermette, who has been an elite faceoff man for years, led all full-time centremen in this series at 59.8 per cent prior to Game 4.
Connor McDavid was dead last at 33.3 per cent.
Worse yet, all of Anaheim’s full-time faceoff men had better percentages than all of Edmonton’s pivots.
“We have to be better as centremen,” Oilers centre Mark Letestu said Tuesday morning. “... But faceoffs have to become a team thing. Your wingers have to get bumps inside, your D have to win pucks that are 50-50 pucks. Then maybe you bring that from a 70-30 (advantage for Anaheim) to a 55-45, something like that.
“We’re probably not going to win the faceoff battle, but we have to do a better job of at least turning those faceoffs into battle situations where it’s not just a free set.”
The Ducks scored just 25 seconds into Game 3 on a set play that sprang Rickard Rakell on a breakaway. The key was another faceoff win.
Anaheim coach Randy Carlyle kicked off this series by suggesting the Oilers would be whining to the referees about the Ducks’ tactics in the circle. If they have done any whining on that front, it hasn’t helped.
What they ought to be doing is working harder or smarter to get an edge. And if that means cheating more effectively than the other guy, so be it.
“If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying,” said Letestu.
“The best guy in the league probably cheats the best. It’s one of those things where you’re just trying to get an advantage and the linesman is there to throw you out when it’s too over the line. It’s not like we’re not cheating. We’re not the cleanest team in the league in faceoffs. We just haven’t won as many as the other team right now.”
Nobody has won at a better clip than Vermette, who has always been good at it.
“I think you get better as you gain experience,” he said.
“Every aspect of the game, if you look back, is getting better and better. I’m sure if you look at some technique back when I started, I don’t think guys were paying as much attention. Now the game is so dissected in every aspect, you’ve got to pay more attention to it.”