Random Thoughts: What is the Statistical Value of a Faceoff?

My random thoughts…

Despite a short slate on the NLL schedule this week, it wasn’t without a lot of drama and more unexpected results than we expect from a full slate of games.  One thing about this league, when you least expect something memorable to happen, it happens.

Record Breaking Night at Pechanga

I still recall sitting up in the press box for the Desert Dogs’ first ever home game back in December 2022 facing Panther City.  I was sitting between Jesse Granger and Steve Carp, two Vegas sports writers, and was helping them understand the game as it went along.  At the end of the 3^rd quarter, with the score 4-3 Panther City, one of them turned to me and asked me, “I thought this was supposed to be a higher scoring game, like 25 goals per game?” 

I told them that yes it was, and that if something didn’t pick up, we might see the record set for fewest combined goals in a game at 11.  The infamous record was set back in January 2001 when the Toronto Rock defeated the Albany Attack 7-4.  On that night in Vegas, the record was avoided when PCLC scored 5 times in the 4^th quarter to win 9-3.

This record normally does come up once or twice per year when you have something like a 5-4 or 6-3 game at the end of the 3^rd quarter.  But on Saturday night, with the score 6-5 San Diego a few minutes into the 3^rd quarter, it wasn’t even fathomable at the time that this record could be tied.  It didn’t even come back into my head until the last 3 minutes or so that they were still at 11 goals, and if it stayed this way, San Diego would break another record for fewest goals by a winning team with 6 (seven has been done a handful of times including that pre-mentioned win by the Rock).

Then it seemed that Kyle Jackson was ruining the party with a goal with 2:33 remaining, only for that to be challenged by Ottawa and overturned.  When nothing further happened, we had a number of broken or tied records.  On top of the two mentioned above, as per Graeme Perrow, the 28:22 of goalless lacrosse to end the game is also a record, and by quite a bit.  The prior record was in 2016 when Toronto and Rochester went goalless for the last 18:43 and it was only the 4^th game in league history where there wasn’t a goal in the 4^th quarter.

Also, Ottawa didn’t score once in the last 37:02 of the game which according to Graeme barely missed the record for the longest stretch by a team without a goal to end a game.  The Toronto Rock of 2008 hold that distinction by going 37:16.

When the goalless droughts go on this long, its not a factor of simply one thing.  On San Diego’s end, the defence was extending out, pressuring Ottawa into outside shots.  They forced Jeff Teat to his weak side on a consistent basis and they really limited the shots on goal.  By my count, Ottawa had just 7 SOG in the 3^rd quarter and 9 in the 4^th, including two in the last possession. 

Wright on 🤘 pic.twitter.com/rkqJTW9Di1

— San Diego Seals (@SealsLax) January 8, 2025

It obviously helps that Chris Origlieri had a far better performance, including stopping both Matisz and Clark on wide open 1 on 1 breakdowns in San Diego’s pressure situations.  Ottawa only had 38 SOG the entire game.  And in an article where we’re going to talk about the importance of faceoffs again, even though Ottawa goes 14 for 16 from the dot, that only amounted to four faceoffs in the 2^nd half so it wasn’t a weapon they could rely upon to begin with when times were critical.

On the opposite side, San Diego had their fair number of shots, 53 in the game, 14 in the 3^rd quarter and 10 in the 4^th.  I’ve seen happen to Zach Higgins more than any other goaltender I can remember in recent history.  He has these games where he’s in a complete zone, making ridiculous save after save, only for his team’s offence to not pull through for him. 

This isn’t an Ottawa thing, it happened way too often in Philadelphia the last few years as well.  But as I replayed the 2^nd half in its entirety and just made quick notes on where opportunities disappeared, Ottawa hit a few pipes in that second half, including in the dying seconds, but San Diego was hitting iron constantly in the 2^nd half.  Take in a missed dunk, a few more blocks, five combined power plays that didn’t produce, and yes, this happened.

On a San Diego fans website, one fan asked if the offence has to get going, and the answer is no.  What happened here was an anomaly.  The only thing that San Diego’s offence didn’t do well after Berg’s go-ahead goal was to get the ball to the middle.  Higgins was facing shots mostly from distance and those shots weren’t going to go when he’s seeing the ball that well.

But give full credit to both defences and goalies.  This was a gem to watch.

Impact of a Faceoff Specialist

On Sunday morning I woke up with a message on my phone from Ty Merrow.  It was a link to his post-game article between Rochester and Georgia with a message that he repeated on Twitter, “this is the closest you’ll ever hear me to saying faceoffs matter.”  To be fair, Ty doesn’t say that faceoffs don’t matter, he’s states that faceoffs only matter at certain times.  And there is certain historical statistical data that can back up that train of thought.

Where that historical data is skewed (in my opinion) is in the adaptation that has occurred in the NLL since the modern faceoff specialists have come into the game is how much the faceoff specialist has transformed the game.  Yes, there were faceoff specialists of this caliber before, Geoff Snider perhaps being the best of that group, but the difference now is that teams are realizing more than ever the impact the faceoff position has.

A few years ago in a Lacrosse Classified team preview, I asked Steve Dietrich about Max Adler, and Dietrich admitted that for a long time he wasn’t a big proponent of a pure FOGO, and didn’t put a huge importance on faceoffs because it only meant a few extra possessions per game, until Halifax had Withers, Toronto had Ierlan, Philadelphia had Baptiste and Albany had Nardella, where it went from a few extra possessions per game to being down 25 possessions per game that he knew he needed someone to level the playing field.

By Ty’s article really shows why faceoffs matter a lot more than you might first think.  Keep in mind, Rochester won this game easily, 15-9 in which newly acquired FOGO Mike Sisselberger won 20 of 29 faceoffs.  One of the main arguments against faceoffs having major impact is that there aren’t that many goals scored directly off faceoff possessions.

How many first possession goals did Rochester score off a faceoff win? Two. That’s clearly not the difference in the game.  While there are other factors as to why Rochester wins this game, the faceoff battle is the focus of every Rochester coach and player’s comments in Ty’s post-game interviews and here’s why.

The first is Time On Floor (TOF), which is a stat I wish we had ready access to have exact data here. Equate this to the NHL’s Time On Ice. There is no NLL source that tracks TOF for each individual player.  Because of that, I do need to make some reasonable assumptions here.  Without getting too long winded as to the assumptions and losing you in the math, here’s what I have come up with:

In a standard ten-man defensive unit, the average TOF per game is 15:00 per player (two lines of five defenders, each team has the ball half the game).  My best guess is that an average possession is roughly 22 seconds.

Using the 22 second assumption, there are 164 possessions in a game. Let’s use a round number for the number of goals at 26, which added to quarters makes 30 faceoffs. Let’s say that team A wins 20 faceoffs and team B wins 10 (for a net of +10 for team A).

This means that Team A is getting 87 possessions compared to 77 for Team B. In this scenario, each defender on Team B is defending 43.5 possessions rather than the customary 41. That’s good for a floor time of 15:57 each, 57 seconds higher than normal. So 10 net possessions means roughly 5.5 (57/10) seconds of added time on a per player basis.

Using that, every faceoff either increases or decreases that TOF of an individual player by approximately 5.5 seconds depending upon if it is won or lost.

In a nine-man defensive unit with a FOGO, the average TOF for the FOGO is 4:00 & the average TOF for the nine-man unit is 16:13.  Each faceoff either increases or decreases the TOF by approximately 6.11 seconds for the nine-man unit.

Coming into this game, Rochester’s faceoff performance averaged 8.2 of 25.6 each game.  Now they played these games with 10 regular defensive players, so the starting point for TOF was 15:00. That net loss of 17.4 faceoffs means by this math, Rochester’s average TOF for their defence was 16:36, or 11% above average. Each of their defenders was playing an extra 1:36.

Now let’s adjust for adding Sisselberger and running with a nine-man defensive unit. The starting point for all of the other defenders is now 16:13. If Sisselberger went 50%, that would bring the average down to from 16:39 to the average of 16:13. So if he could win 50%, their defenders would play less (even though there was one fewer of them) AND you get those extra possessions on offence.

But Sisselberger did significantly better than 50%, going 20 for 29 off of faceoffs.  While it’s a small sample size and the margin of error will be larger than normal, on a normal night, Rochester would expect that TOF to drop to 15:06, or 9% lower than the 16:36 they were experiencing.  A 9% increase in efficiency by adding one player is significant.

So their nine-man unit played roughly the same average time as the average ten-man unit, and they were getting the extra possessions.

This math suggests that bringing in a pure FOGO makes sense if you’re losing 65% or more of your draws. If your FOGO can get you back to 50%, your defensive TOF doesn’t change and you’ve already increased the number of possessions.  Keeping in mind, you can always take the time to teach that FOGO how to play a regular shift of defence over time and improve your situation even further.

But to add to the mix as to why faceoffs were so critical, Ty’s interviews go to point out even more of the critical pieces.  On the faceoffs Rochester were winning before Sisselberger, they were not being won directly off the draw.  They were trying to direct the ball somewhere that they could win a loose ball battle with their opponents, and that too was taking a toll on their defence just to win the ball. 

Now Sisselberger is winning the draw to himself and saving their defence even more energy.  Its also giving Rochester the ability to extend momentum.  We all know lacrosse is a game of runs and momentum.  Faceoff specialists win the draws immediately following a goal so that you can keep the pressure on your opponent. 

If you’re behind and you don’t have a top faceoff specialist, the timeframe needed to come back gets extended out.  I recall this years ago watching Geoff Snider and teams down three would start pulling the goalie with around 4 minutes to go.  If you aren’t winning faceoffs, you’ve just extended the minimum timeframe you need to catch up late in a game by 25-30 seconds per goal you’re behind.

The difficulty of faceoff specialists, even if they’re pure FOGO’s, is that there aren’t many of them out there that are game ready.  Post-college, in the field game, there are 8 jobs available in the PLL and possibly 3-4 practice roster spots at any point in time.

For Rochester, when you’re 1-4, you need to shake something up to give your team the energy boost it needed to right the ship.  Their defence was more settled.  They still allowed more shots than they would have liked to, but it was down from the 57 average they came into the week with.  More possessions and more timely possessions meant a more balanced offence.

OTL-bany 

A few years ago a fan had asked me the question as to whether the NLL should award a point for an overtime loss the way the NHL does.  My thoughts are still the same then as they are today, in that if the NLL wants to ever go in that direction, they need to adopt the hockey points system they use internationally and not the North American system. 

Internationally, every game is worth 3 points, so if you win in regulation, you get all three points, and if the game is won in overtime, the winner gets 2 points and the loser gets one.  It makes for a system where every game is worth the same and teams are pushing harder in a tied game late to get the winner in regulation because there’s more points on the line to win the game.  Picture a situation where a team is tied late in the game, but desperately needs the 3 points to stay in the playoff race, so they’re pulling their goaltender with 90 seconds to go to try to win it right there.

If there was a move to that type of system, the playoff scenario articles become far more difficult to do because the number of scenarios that could happen just doubled.  But is there some merit that a team that loses in OT should get some form of benefit?  Perhaps.

The reason I bring this up is that if there is a team that would benefit significantly from OTL points, its Albany, after they lost 12-11 in overtime to Vegas.  Three of their four losses are in overtime, and interestingly enough, all three have been at home.

This game was one of those nice back and forth type of games.  When Jonathan Donville tied the game at 7 early in the 3^rd quarter, nobody had more than a 1 goal lead the rest of the way.

A few things went better for Vegas this time around.  First, Donville, who had been struggling to find the back of the net early this season, found his groove with a hat trick.  If you watch his celebration on his first goal with 10 minutes left in the 3^rd, you knew how much getting that one to go meant for him.  Then there were the rookies.  Adam Poitras had a hat trick including the game winner.  And Jackson Webster made his NLL debut when Dylan Watson was scratched from the game, and made the most of it, becoming a rare NLL rookie to score a hat trick in his first ever game.

Another thing I had mentioned was how would Landon Kells’ play might change once Justin Geddie was available to play.  Well, so far so good.  Prior to this game Vegas was surrendering 15.75 goals/game.  Saturday night, Kells put up a 0.814 save percentage.  If there’s anything that Vegas might need to do still, its to get a faceoff specialist.  Not surprisingly, Joe Nardella dominated at the dot, 23 of 28, and it might be time for Vegas to get that specialist and let Kirst focus on the rest of his game where he shines far better.

Defensively, Vegas was better at getting on top of guys, pushing out, eliminating time for Albany to get their shots off, and that was a huge help.

And of course on Tucker Out Lymphoma Night, I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss the performance of the Williams family.  Dyson scored a hat trick, including the game tying goal in the 4^th quarter that sent the game to OT, which had you wondering if the storybook ending would happen and he would score the game winner.  And for Shawn, well, he made it quite clear that there were no family favours happening that night when he threw the challenge flag on Dyson’s first goal, only to be told he had thrown it too late.  But I’m definitely happy we get to see three Tucker fundraising games this year, and despite their struggles this season, Vegas now has the lead in the standings in the Tucker Cup.

Until next time….