Don't Lose That Draw!

Don't get me wrong I love stat analysis but one of the dumbest conclusions next to "you must have good special teams play to win in this league" (obviously, as that's why one of the teams with the worst powerplays ever in the playoffs won the 2011 Stanley Cup, isn't it?), is the so-called "importance" of winning faceoffs.

Logically, in one's brain you would feel the team that has possession of the puck is better off than the one that doesn't. What is left out of the raw faceoff winning percentage data is so many things.

All faceoffs are not equal.
Losing a faceoff in the neutral zone or the attacking zone is not the same as losing one in your own end.
Factor in the time of the game, the score, etc., and yeah, I'll take the guy with the low faceoff percentage who can win the one crucial draw when it actually means something.
In fact losing a faceoff is never the end of the world as how often have you seen the subsequent puck battle result in the "losing" team getting the puck back or just a typical English League midfield scramble circa 1975?
Often (shock! horror!) centers lose faceoffs on purpose early in games to suck their opponents in to get them overconfident later in the game on crucial draws.

Anyway, faceoffs (and I'm sure most hockey fans do not go to games to watch faceoffs hence the often heard screams of "drop the puck!") are vastly overrated, especially by media some of whom love this when needing something (anything!) to write about in often dull snoozefests.

Here's a list of the best playoff faceoff artists last season.
Out of this list the only faceoff guys who made the Final were ranked 15th (Travis Zajac, New Jersey) and 22nd (Jarret Stoll, Los Angles Kings).

Maybe this is just a one-playoff season anomaly. Let's have a look at 2011 then, shall we? We've got the Boston Bruins' Patrice Bergeron 3rd and David Krejci 16th. OK, let's say that's one for the pro-faceoff acolytes even if in the Top 20 of playoff faceoff percentage less than half (nine) were players on teams who went to the Conference Finals or the Cup Final.

OK, 2010. We have 5 of the Top 20 faceoff guys' teams as having made a significant playoff run of at least three rounds. We also have leader Eric Belanger's Caps out in rd. 1. So for every Brandon Yip we have a yang.

I'm no Gilbert

I could go on and on but faceoff winning percentage offers very little insight into the actual winning or losing of games. If it did where are the Cups for such all-time great faceoff men as Yanic Perreault, Mike Sillinger or Adam Oates? Heck, where are the deep playoff runs for any of the teams these faceoff greats were on? I'm sure Oatesy's "success" in the playoffs is more passing oriented than on the faceoff dotted line. Sure, for every Steve Yzerman or Joe Nieuwendyk you can argue your case but statistically you'd be tossed out of Stats 101 if that was your argument. To determine whether these stars are the norm or just the minority in this John Travolta of a B movie theory.

How about the regular season? Taking the past three seasons and looking at the Top 20 each season in faceoff winning percentage, how many of these faceoff specialists saw their teams make the playoffs?
2011-12 
Thirteen out of 20 players made the playoffs (San Jose Sharks had three centers in the Top 20 as well...and a lot of good it did them in rd. 1 but that's another story)

2010-11 
Eleven out of 20. Just FYI, the Washington Capitals topped the East and their best faceoff man was Nicklas Backstrom who was 33rd overall. Weirdly, San Jose had no one in the Top 20--hm, McSorley stick measurements, anyone after the '11/12 jump?

2009-10
Ten out of 20. Actually, nine of the 16 playoff teams did not place a single player in the Top 20 in faceoffs. Plus the perennial playoff Philadelphia Flyers had none at all over the three seasons.

So over the past three seasons, just over 56 percent of the players in the Top 20 in faceoffs in the regular season have been on playoff teams. Pretty decent record but not mindblowingly overwhelming enough to win a hockey pool or even a Cup maybe.

Now, how about we compare the faceoff records to something that probably matters more than controlling the puck? Yes, actually putting the puck in the net whether you won the faceoff and scored off that "control" or you stole the puck back after a faceoff loss and somewhere along the line put the biscuit in the basket.

Top 20 in scoring from '09/10 through '11/12 regular seasons had 44 of the 60 players who are on that list (obviously, like on the faceoff dot, some multiple times over the three seasons in question) made the playoffs. That's a 73 percent return on your scoring vs. the 56 percent in faceoff investment.

But I sure am!

Hey, you believe what you want. There are still fans and media who believe that you need an "elite" goalie to win a Cup so for every flukey Jonathan Quick channeling Patrick Roy '86 there is an Antti Niemi or Chris Osgood. So to each their own. All I'm saying is faceoff stats should be taken with grains of malt.

Logical Divisional Realignment

Did you read about the radical realignment of the NHL's divisions and conferences? It's radical!

OK, arranging teams in divisions (or are they calling them conferences now?) where most every team is in the same time zone strikes most fans as the most logical realignment the NHL has ever done.

Remember this is the league that when the Vancouver Canucks entered in 1970 this westernmost team was placed in the Eastern Division. That started the Chicago Blackhawks (oops, sorry, Black [space] Hawks back then) on their westward divisional journey that has lasted to this day.Then despite two years later adding two expansion teams (the Atlanta Flames and the New York Islanders) based in the Eastern Time Zone, left the Canucks in the Eastern Division.

No, radical is further defined by what happened when the NHL decided from the 1974/75 to go with four divisions and two conferences and to heck with geography as follows:
CAMPBELL CONFERENCE
PATRICK DIVISION
Atlanta Flames
New York Islanders
New York Rangers
Philadelphia Flyers
SMYTHE DIVISION
Chicago Black Hawks
Kansas City Scouts
Minnesota North Stars
St. Louis Blues
Vancouver Canucks
WALES CONFERENCE
NORRIS DIVISION
Detroit Red Wings
Los Angeles Kings
Montreal Canadiens
Pittsburgh Penguins
Washington Capitals
ADAMS DIVISION
Boston Bruins
Buffalo Sabres
California Seals (no longer Golden)
Toronto Maple Leafs

Sealing the deal

It doesn't stop there. When the Seals who had moved to Cleveland and were now known as the Barons merged (say what?) with the North Stars, the league folded the Barons and "moved" the North Stars into the Adams Family.

Then for the 1979/80 and 1980/81 the merger with the WHA became a free-for-all. A balanced schedule was set up (imagine that!) and the divisions were now:
CAMPBELL CONFERENCE
PATRICK DIVISION
Atlanta Flames
New York Islanders
New York Rangers
Philadelphia Flyers
Washington Capitals
SMYTHE DIVISION
Chicago Black Hawks
Colorado Rockies (the former KC Scouts and the now New Jersey Devils)
Edmonton Oilers
St. Louis Blues
Vancouver Canucks
Winnipeg Jets
WALES CONFERENCE
NORRIS DIVISION
Detroit Red Wings
Hartford Whalers
Los Angeles Kings
Montreal Canadiens
Pittsburgh Penguins
ADAMS DIVISION
Boston Bruins
Buffalo Sabres
Minnesota North Stars
Quebec Nordiques
Toronto Maple Leafs

Finally, from 1981/82 the NHL woke up from its most likely drug-induced haze (hey, it was the '70s, man) and created divisions from then on that had a semblance of geographical sense while still naming the divisions after founders of the league.

I won't even go into how the playoffs worked over those seasons as you may need serious medical attention in trying to understand the best-of-three series and byes in the first round to division winners.

Here We Go Again: Calgary Invading Toronto

For a couple of cities who have hardly anything in common, Calgary and Toronto sure seemed to be tied together a lot at least when it comes to the Grey Cup.

It's also sort of poetic that the 100th anniversary of our national party known as the Grey Cup should feature not only the Calgary Stampeders but also be held in Toronto. The Grey Cup may go back 100 years but it really was Calgary Stampeder fans who made the Grey Cup come alive. All they had to do was ride a horse through the lobby of Toronto the Good's most venerated hotel--the Hotel York.

 THE place to horse around in Toronto

I'm not referring to yesterday's "incident" of Marty making an appearance in that hotel's lobby. It's a far more significant, out of the blue ride to glory after the Stamps won the 1948 Grey Cup. Even before beating the Ottawa Rough Riders 12-7, Stamps fans were already hootin' and hollerin' it up on Yonge Street and beyond. Two trainloads (yes, pre-airplane days) of fans had arrived in T.O. the week of the Grey Cup to show the staid Easterners how it was done. It also didn't hurt that the 1948 Stamps had run the table going 12-0 in the regular season (take that, '72 Miami Dolphins) in the Western Interprovincial Football Union.

Yes, back then there was no Canadian Football League yet. Besides the union in the West there were two Eastern "unions"--the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union (featuring most of the teams we have grown up with in the CFL Eastern Division) and the Ontario Rugby Football Union which included a team called the Toronto Beaches-Indians. I'm not sure what our now known as First Nations people had to do with Toronto beaches other than probably having a pretty legitimate land claim to them but they Jim Thorped it up at least for that season. After 1948 the Indians disappeared (I fully expect a Royal Commission to investigate this!) and the Balmy Beach Beachers resumed play until 1957 when the sands of Lake Ontario beaches one assumes blew them off the football map.

So when you're still calling your sport rugby football at least back East, we're not talking the nationwide appeal it has today. That's where Calgarians came in. It wasn't just the horses that showed up in the Hotel York's lobby, it was also Varsity Stadium's goalposts that the fans brought along. There's more, and it's worth reading what the Calgary Sun dug up on the legendary 1948 party at the Hotel York.

Needless to say the "modern" Grey Cup (and the impetus to create a national league although it took until 1958 for the CFL to actually form) really was sparked by the excitement generated from the perfect season of the 1948 Calgary Stampeders and its fans showing the nation that sports events are meant to be a party.

Fast-forward 23 years to 1971 and again we see Toronto and Calgary somehow become tied fatefully together. The 1971 Grey Cup held in Vancouver was to be the crowning glory for ending a 19-year championship drought for the Argos. Led by its colorful coach Leo Cahill and its even more colorful players (check out the "Engraved On A Nation" Greatest Team That Never Won episode online or on continuous repeat on TSN for more on that team), this was supposed to be the coronation of a team for the ages. One Leon McQuay fumble at the 12-yard line later and the Stamps were 14-11 champions on the rain-slick Tartan turf of Empire Stadium. X-Ray McQuay's fumble aside, the entire vaunted Argo offence was more to blame but then again this was an offence that managed barely 21 points a game in the regular season.

 

Suited up for the Argos

Twenty more years pass and the Argos are matched up with the Stamps in the 1991 Grey Cup. This is another star-studded Argo team put together by none other than Los Angeles Kings' owner Bruce McNall with a couple of his buddies, Wayne Gretzky and John Candy, along for the ownership ride. This time there was no unlucky Argo Bounce and Toronto's Rocket Ismail ran a kickoff back 87 yards to clinch the 1991 Grey Cup on a snowy field in Winnipeg.

Sure the Stamps and Argos have been in other Grey Cups vs. other opponents, but when they all too infrequently get matched up together something memorable seems to happen. Combine this with the teams both finally meeting up in the Centre of the Universe at the 100th Grey Cup and, well, put on your spurs and hitch up the horses, Martha, this one could be an all-time classic.

  Cowtown? This is a One-Horse Town!