Have you ever wondered whether certain players win more of their face-offs when a left-handed (or right-handed) opponent lines up against them? It’s a request I’ve gotten numerous times here, so I’m happy to announce that player profiles on faceoffs.net now contain split stats against left/right handed opponents. You can also view this data across the league’s top face-off takers here.
To show what you can do with this information, here are two interesting charts that may be of particular interest to Anaheim Ducks and Nashville Predators fans:
Ryan Getzlaf, an approximately average overall face-off taker, has consistently shown an ability to win more of his face-offs against opponents who shoot right-handed — a bias that has persisted as his performance has slightly improved each of the past four years.
On the bottom, Mike Ribeiro‘s overall face-off numbers display his struggles, but one of the key reasons behind them may have gone unnoticed until now. Ribeiro goes from merely mediocre against left-handed shooters (who take about 63% of the NHL’s face-offs, but that’s a topic for another day) to downright awful against right-handed shooters, and this spread is consistent across all four years that are currently in my database.
Most players do not display such a wide disparity in their performance, and in fact for most any bias they did have would be overwhelmed by the simple random variation that occurs in year-to-year face-off data. But there appear to be some, like Getzlaf and Ribeiro, for whom the handedness of their face-off opponents does matter, and this will help in unearthing such cases.
Below are splits (FO% vs. left-handed minus FO% vs. right-handed) for the 52 players who have taken at least 100 face-offs against both right- and left-handed opponents every season since 2011-12. I ordered them by increasing standard deviation, so the players towards the top are the ones with the most consistent splits across the four years.
| Player | 2014-15 | 2013-14 | 2012-13 | 2011-12 | Average | Std.dev. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adam Henrique | 4.0 | 3.8 | 3.9 | 2.6 | 3.6 | 0.7 |
| Claude Giroux | 0.5 | -0.3 | 0.8 | -1.7 | -0.2 | 1.1 |
| Nicklas Backstrom | 5.7 | 2.2 | 3.7 | 3.0 | 3.7 | 1.5 |
| Ryan Getzlaf | -8.7 | -9.0 | -7.5 | -5.6 | -7.7 | 1.5 |
| Antoine Vermette | -2.0 | -3.6 | -4.8 | -1.1 | -2.9 | 1.6 |
| Mike Ribeiro | 10.2 | 9.3 | 8.9 | 12.6 | 10.3 | 1.7 |
| Henrik Zetterberg | 1.8 | -1.0 | 3.5 | 0.6 | 1.2 | 1.9 |
| Mike Richards | 2.5 | -2.4 | -0.8 | -0.8 | -0.4 | 2.1 |
| Jay McClement | -2.8 | -1.4 | -4.7 | -6.2 | -3.8 | 2.1 |
| Jarret Stoll | 5.1 | 3.1 | 1.2 | 0.1 | 2.4 | 2.2 |
| Sidney Crosby | -3.7 | 1.0 | 0.0 | -2.7 | -1.4 | 2.2 |
| Eric Staal | -3.3 | -4.5 | 0.0 | -0.1 | -2.0 | 2.3 |
| Paul Gaustad | -0.1 | 4.3 | 4.8 | 1.6 | 2.7 | 2.3 |
| David Desharnais | -2.8 | -1.8 | 2.8 | -0.7 | -0.6 | 2.4 |
| Mikko Koivu | -3.1 | -2.0 | -2.4 | 2.7 | -1.2 | 2.6 |
| Nate Thompson | 4.9 | 5.0 | 4.4 | -0.8 | 3.4 | 2.8 |
| Ryan O’Reilly | 0.4 | -3.4 | 2.0 | 3.2 | 0.6 | 2.9 |
| Paul Stastny | -6.6 | -5.4 | -12.0 | -7.5 | -7.9 | 2.9 |
| Martin Hanzal | 4.3 | -0.1 | -2.4 | 2.4 | 1.1 | 2.9 |
| Tomas Plekanec | -2.7 | -1.0 | -4.0 | -7.9 | -3.9 | 2.9 |
| Sean Couturier | 1.2 | 1.7 | -4.8 | -1.0 | -0.7 | 3.0 |
| Brandon Sutter | -2.6 | -5.9 | 1.4 | -1.4 | -2.1 | 3.0 |
| Tyler Bozak | -1.4 | -2.5 | -7.4 | -7.0 | -4.6 | 3.1 |
| Sam Gagner | 1.1 | -4.2 | -0.4 | 3.3 | -0.1 | 3.2 |
| Vernon Fiddler | -2.0 | 0.2 | 4.8 | 3.9 | 1.7 | 3.2 |
| Brian Boyle | 2.4 | -5.1 | -3.3 | -1.4 | -1.9 | 3.2 |
| Derek Stepan | 0.4 | 0.5 | 7.1 | 5.1 | 3.3 | 3.4 |
| Joe Pavelski | -9.3 | -3.6 | -3.1 | -9.4 | -6.4 | 3.5 |
| David Backes | 4.1 | -3.4 | 0.7 | 4.4 | 1.5 | 3.6 |
| Patrice Bergeron | -2.5 | 3.6 | 6.5 | 1.6 | 2.3 | 3.8 |
| Brad Richards | -5.7 | -9.1 | 0.0 | -3.3 | -4.5 | 3.8 |
| Jonathan Toews | -3.3 | -1.1 | 2.5 | 5.9 | 1.0 | 4.0 |
| Kyle Turris | 4.0 | -2.9 | -6.2 | 0.9 | -1.1 | 4.4 |
| Derick Brassard | 8.1 | 0.0 | -1.4 | -0.8 | 1.5 | 4.5 |
| Joe Thornton | 2.6 | -6.0 | -2.4 | 3.6 | -0.6 | 4.5 |
| Boyd Gordon | 5.0 | -6.4 | -0.2 | 0.2 | -0.4 | 4.7 |
| John Tavares | 0.5 | 0.4 | 9.9 | 7.0 | 4.5 | 4.8 |
| Bryan Little | -3.8 | 0.3 | -9.5 | 1.1 | -3.0 | 4.9 |
| Steven Stamkos | 1.2 | 3.4 | 11.8 | 1.8 | 4.6 | 4.9 |
| Logan Couture | 5.5 | 0.8 | 8.2 | 12.6 | 6.8 | 4.9 |
| Gregory Campbell | -4.4 | 7.6 | 5.0 | 1.2 | 2.4 | 5.2 |
| Ryan Nugent-Hopkins | 7.1 | -5.7 | -1.6 | -2.2 | -0.6 | 5.4 |
| Henrik Sedin | 6.7 | 1.5 | -6.9 | 0.1 | 0.4 | 5.6 |
| Matt Duchene | 3.7 | -2.3 | 7.0 | -5.6 | 0.7 | 5.7 |
| Pavel Datsyuk | -14.0 | 1.4 | -4.0 | -3.2 | -5.0 | 6.5 |
| David Legwand | 11.3 | -2.0 | 2.1 | -3.1 | 2.1 | 6.5 |
| Marcus Kruger | 13.8 | -0.1 | -1.1 | 4.1 | 4.2 | 6.8 |
| Frans Nielsen | 12.4 | -3.9 | -4.9 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 7.9 |
| Anze Kopitar | -11.6 | 4.1 | 6.2 | 2.4 | 0.3 | 8.1 |
| Chris Kelly | -18.4 | -11.6 | -6.1 | 1.4 | -8.7 | 8.4 |
| Valtteri Filppula | 0.2 | 0.9 | -7.0 | 14.8 | 2.2 | 9.1 |
| Cody Hodgson | -17.6 | 1.7 | 8.2 | 6.2 | -0.4 | 11.8 |
Weighted Situational Faceoff Percentage | Hockey Thinking says:
[…] you liked this, I highly recommend Craig’s article on faceoff splits. Teams would have much more success playing to the handedness of the opponent than they will […]