bustaheims
Active member
Nik the Trik said:I think, though, that there's a pretty glaring problem with that analysis that misses a pretty obvious point. That argument holds that winning face-offs has a pretty small impact on winning because everyone is close to 50% and the differences don't reflect a lot of possessions.
The problem, though, is that it ignores that one of the reasons that there isn't a wild swing between teams at the top is because teams care about face-off percentage and will make roster decisions on the basis of not being too weak in the area.
There are also some other issues when looking at it on a macro level like that. The top faceoff teams are going to play roughly the same amount of games against the other top faceoff teams as they are against the bottom teams. Same with the bottom teams against the other bottom teams. Since all faceoffs are determined to have been won by someone, the balance of competition is going to pull everyone towards the middle. Top teams are going to have less success against other top teams, while bottom teams are going to have more success against other bottom teams. There may only be a 4-5% difference in totals at the end of the season, but the head to head differences between the top teams and the bottom teams is going to be much more significant - probably closer to 15-20%.