Dispelling 3 myths about the Washington Capitals
By Rohan Yaradi
Myth: The Washington Capitals do not win enough face-offs to be successful going forward.
The most recent hockey video game I own is NHL 2K10. When I would win a game and the pre-programmed broadcasters would offer their “analysis,” the most common line I remember is that I won because I “dominated in the face-off dot. When you win faceoffs, you control possession.”
That anecdote is to say that one of the most basic ways hockey fans analyze a team or player is by looking at face-off numbers. On the surface that seems obvious; as Drew Remenda said in NHL 2K10, the team that wins the most face-offs will logically have an immediate advantage.
For many years, Jay Beagle was the best face-off taker on the Washington Capitals, one of the many qualities that made him such a fan-favorite. This offseason he signed a $3 million per year contract with the Vancouver Canucks, making him too rich for the cap-strapped Caps.
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Unsurprisingly, the Capitals have struggled horribly in the dots this season: per NHL.com, as of 55 games into the season, they are last in the league at 46.2%. Only Lars Eller (50.7%) and Nic Dowd (50.2%) are better than average in the circles, while Evgeny Kuznetsov is posting an awful 38.8%.
As the trade deadline nears, there have been calls by some in the Washington fanbase to bring Beagle back, perhaps by trading away Andre Burakovsky who carries the same cap hit. Beagle currently has a 53.2% face-off percentage.
While bringing in somebody like Beagle would undoubtedly win the team more face-offs, a closer look at the statistics show that winning more draws will not necessarily lead to more wins. The Hockey News‘s Dom Luszczyszyn had this to say in 2015:
"Stats guys talk about shot rates because it does a fair job at predicting future goals – better than anything else that’s currently available. Faceoffs don’t. All they tell you is who won the faceoff. They have their place, but they’re just not as important as they’re made out to be."
To put this theory to the test, I took a look at Washington’s face-off performance last season. Through 55 games, they were winning draws at a 50.4% clip: better, but still middle-of-the-pack. That extra 4% had resulted in a total of three more points.
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With those three points, the Capitals would still be second in the Metropolitan Division right now, and only marginally higher than their current overall position. Still, one could argue that even that difference could become significant by the end of the season.
In the playoffs, the Caps elevated their game in pretty much every statistic, except for one: face-offs. Their win percentage actually went down in the postseason, falling to 49.1%. Their opponent in the finals, the Vegas Golden Knights, were even worse, at 48.4%.
If that does not convince you that face-offs do not determine playoff success, then consider this: in the Finals, the team that lost the face-off battle won three of the five games. When the Caps eliminated the Pittsburgh Penguins in Round 2 Game 6, they won 38.1% of the draws.
In neither a long-term nor game-by-game context do face-offs correlate strongly with postseason success. Could winning more face-offs help the Washington Capitals win more games? Perhaps, as it is always preferable to win a face-off than it is to lose one.
But the fact of the matter is that if the team is focusing on improving their face-off totals, they are focusing on the wrong aspect of their game. There are more important areas that need immediate attention, and bringing in somebody like Beagle would not cure those.