The Noon Number

I tend to agree. I think it’s a very, very over-emphasized skill.

Look at MoJo, for example. He sucks at draws. Sucks. Let’s call it 40% suck (it’s actually higher, but for the ease of the numbers, we’ll go with 40%). But everyone would be perfectly satisfied if he was at 50%. So what are we talking about here? If he’s getting 10 draws per game as the 2C (which is a high number, given 19, 21 and 15), we’re talking one draw difference. One.

What’s the likelihood that that one draw ends up hurting you? How many “one draw per game” do you have to add up before you’ve allowed a goal or failed to score one?

Point being, I wouldn’t shift MoJo to wing “because he can’t win faceoffs” – if he’s better at center, I’m betting the difference between him playing there and winning just 40% of his draws and him playing on the wing is worth keeping him at center.

That said, late in a tie game or with a lead, I’d make sure he’s not out there for D-zone draws. But otherwise, it wouldn’t change much about how I’d utilize him.

I’m also buying more and more (and maybe this is just FO-artist-strategy changing) that what happens in the immediate second or two after a faceoff is just as important as the actual faceoff itself. So many times you hear “xx wins the faceoff” but they don’t actually come out of it with puck possession because the wings weren’t helping out or they won it back through the D-men at the points and it exited the zone, etc. Obviously the center has the biggest effect on it, but the stat that is counted (I think?) is the center winning the draw or not, and I’m not convinced that paints the whole picture.

A lost FO (assuming the PK clears the puck) eats about :15-:20 off the PP normally. That’s if they get a clean zone entry.