These numbers are as of today from NHL.com, I was just wondering what you guys think, because to the naked eye, it looks like face offs have no correlation with winning ***from strictly a mathematical perspective. Yes, I know how important they are in the game and all that but it is interesting to see these numbers. Any thoughts?

it’s sort of like comparing the number of apples you have with the number of oranges you have, subtracting one from the other, and trying to figure out from there how to grow a banana.

We’ve actually had a fair amount of FO% discussion, if you do a fanpost search you’ll find one that MarioD & I had, and another (more conclusive) point that Mario raised (I think it’s his own fanpost), which essentially (at least, as far as I’m concerned) proves that FO% & winning are at least slightly correlated.

The summary is because if you lose a FO in your own zone, for a few seconds the offense has the equivalent of a 5 on 3 powerplay. Goals scored do increase noticeably in those situations. That means if you lose in your own zone you’re giving up more goals — making you more likely to lose more games. The obvious flip side is if you win in your opponent’s zone, you’re making more goals, making you more likely to win games. And, almost as obviously, if you win in your own zone it’s essentially negating a few-second 5 on 3 powerplay.

I didn’t really look at and analyze the numbers. I just posted them up here because I knew it was a big topic of discussion earlier and thought that this would spark some good convo. I agree that FO% has no direct coorelation with W%, but they are important to win. Something with a margin that falls so close to 1/2 (FO% is usually around 45%-55%) wont affect the out come of an individual game when there are so many face offs in a game.

The problem I have is with people who think that if Richards would win 51% of his draws rather than 49% (as he’s doing this year, compared to last year) than the Flyers would win more games. That would only be true if EVERYTHING stayed the same as last year, which never happens. Not only did our goalies change, our defense change, his line-mates change, the opponents change, his short handed time change, but luck changes.

That’s fine, I’m sorry that this is frustrating for ya — I, for one, have not ever said this as a problem and will therefore put it aside since it’s irrelevant to our discussion.

Winning face-offs is important. And it certainly affects goal-differential, but it doesn’t translate directly to Wins and Losses.

Here’s a question:
What do you mean by “directly”?

If by “directly” you mean that winning a faceoff wins a game, then you would be correct in saying that that’s false in the NHL (maybe not in a game of seeing “whoever wins this faceoff wins this game,” but that’s besides the point).

If by “directly” you mean that winning a faceoff has a direct, positive correlation to win% — i.e., as faceoff win % goes up then so does team win % — then you are incorrect. If all things are equal (and I understand what you’re saying — they’re not all equal — and I’m getting to that), if two teams are identical in every way except FO%, then the team with the better FO% will win more games. Statistically applied, this means that you should get players that are good at FOs if you can. That’s in a vacuum.

Now, to put it in context, and I hope this will make my point clear since as you have said you’re not contradicting me but just pointing out practical evidence:

FO% is NOT the most important thing, and it does not have the HIGHEST direct, positive correlation to winning. That does NOT make it have not have a direct relationship to winning — many things have a direct relationship to winning, since there are many inputs to obtain the output “games won.” In the sense that it affects goal-differential, it MUST directly translate to Wins & Losses. If you say that it does not, you say that Wins & Losses are unrelated to goal differential. If you say that, I urge you to reconsider by reading the numerous studies out there.

Statistical “application” wise, which I assume you mean in this case is the use of statistics to create a winning team, is where MarioD and I differed. I’ve stated that discussion enough, no need to waste more finger effort. Suffice it to say, you’re completely correct as far as I can tell that FO% is not exceptionally high on the totem pole of things related to winning. But, equally important, is that in some situations (not uncommon), having a high FO% guy can definitively and statistically drastically improve your chances of winning a game (not guarantee, but we’re talking a few percentage point swing — in the scheme of things that can affect a percent chance of winning a hockey game, not an insignificant event). The guys capable of doing this are rare, and since they’re pitted against each other in those types of situations more often than not it tends to be a wash anyway, but it’s absolutely important to have a FO ace for those situations. Application and value wise, there is a lot to be said for having a Malhotra taking your FOs, and you may be getting great value for that type of player if all you’re paying him for (really) is his G, A, and defensive ability (positive or negative). To ignore the FO% dept is to handicap your team — not as much so as ignoring other departments, of course, but all advantages must be sought after all.

Out of interest (boredom), I did an x-y scatter plot of point% vs FO% from the numbers above.
The r-square value was 0.11 (11% correlation).
That doesn’t show much at all. If I was to do a significance test the result would probably come out as significant.