Face-offs are odd. They are a valued skill yet do not appear to correlate to victory.
This season I have tracked whether the team that wins a game (excluding games that went to 3-on-3 overtime or a shoot-out, as those are different animals) also led the game in face-offs, shots and hits.
My expectation was that face-offs would definitely correlate, shots might and hits would not.
In fact, through 898 games as of yesterday, none of the three markers runs in tandem with victory. The count is as follows: for hits, the winning team had the most hits 40.5 per cent of the time, fewer hits 54.4 per cent, and in the other 5.0 per cent the team tied for hits.
For shots, the respectively numbers were 46.7 per cent, 49.8 per cent and 3.6 per cent; for face-offs, 45.8 per cent, 50.1 per cent and 4.1 per cent.
Hits you can understand – you hit a guy when you don’t have the puck, and therefore are not in any position to score. Shots are surprising – you have to shoot to score, but on the other hand quality of shots matters more than the raw total, and besides, a team that is trailing will shoot more late in the game, whereas the team that is leading will often go into a defensive shell.
But the lack of pay-off for face-offs is puzzling, at first. Hockey analytics is driven by data on the importance of puck possession.
The face-off is a battle for possession, so winning it should improve your possession numbers.
The problem is that winning the face-off is usually irrelevant to possession. The centremen jab their blades at the puck and one is deemed to have won the face-off.
Then typically the puck goes skittling towards the wingers. This is where the real battle for possession begins. Most of the time the key skill is not winning the face-off but winning the aftermath of the face-off.
The face-off itself becomes an almost random event.
The idea that face-off percentage is not a key to victory is bound to meet resistance in the hockey world.
In December, Detroit media reported that the Red Wings coach, Jeff Blashill, had over the summer received an email from a stats guy who asserted that a team’s best chance at victory came if it won 49.5 per cent of its face-offs. Blashill sounded doubtful as he recounted his reaction to the email.
“If you’re 49.5 you’re perfect. If you’re 50.5 you’re not as good, so I’m not sure,” he said, as per mlive.com. “Two areas where face-offs are critical – power play and penalty kill. We’re a team that wants the puck. We don’t want to give the puck up, so starting with the puck I believe helps out. That guy didn’t.”
Why do hockey people still believe in face-offs?
Because they are absolutely right to believe that a sequence of play, and even a game, can hinge on a face-off.
Here are the three of the best examples of this I have seen this season:
- March 6, New York Islanders and New York Rangers tied late in the third. Isles’ Casey Cizikas beats Derek Stepan cleanly on the draw and pulls the puck back into open space, where Cal Clutterbuck steps in and fires the winner home before the Ranger goaltender can really react.
- December 30, Philadelphia at San Jose, face-off in the Sharks zone. The Flyers’ Claude Giroux positions his stick as if he is going to pull the puck back. Instead he shoots directly on net and catches Martin Jones off guard. Jones gets a piece of it but the puck trickles into the net.
- December 28, Los Angeles at Vancouver, Canucks on the power play, face-off in the LA zone. The Kings’ Anze Kopitar, instead of trying to get the puck to his guys, whacks it forward – that is, in the same direction as the Canucks player wants to get the puck. With their forces combined, though, the puck whizzes out past the blue line and the Canucks have to regroup.
To adapt a line from American Hustle, face-offs mean nothing until they mean everything.
rmckenzie@thenational.ae
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Last five meetings
2013: South Korea 0-2 Brazil
2002: South Korea 2-3 Brazil
1999: South Korea 1-0 Brazil
1997: South Korea 1-2 Brazil
1995: South Korea 0-1 Brazil
Note: All friendlies
Dr Graham's three goals
Short term
Establish logistics and systems needed to globally deploy vaccines
Intermediate term
Build biomedical workforces in low- and middle-income nations
Long term
A prototype pathogen approach for pandemic preparedness
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Results:
First Test: New Zealand 30 British & Irish Lions 15
Second Test: New Zealand 21 British & Irish Lions 24
Third Test: New Zealand 15 British & Irish Lions 15
The Africa Institute 101
Housed on the same site as the original Africa Hall, which first hosted an Arab-African Symposium in 1976, the newly renovated building will be home to a think tank and postgraduate studies hub (it will offer master’s and PhD programmes). The centre will focus on both the historical and contemporary links between Africa and the Gulf, and will serve as a meeting place for conferences, symposia, lectures, film screenings, plays, musical performances and more. In fact, today it is hosting a symposium – 5-plus-1: Rethinking Abstraction that will look at the six decades of Frank Bowling’s career, as well as those of his contemporaries that invested social, cultural and personal meaning into abstraction.
Did you know?
Brunch has been around, is some form or another, for more than a century. The word was first mentioned in print in an 1895 edition of Hunter’s Weekly, after making the rounds among university students in Britain. The article, entitled Brunch: A Plea, argued the case for a later, more sociable weekend meal. “By eliminating the need to get up early on Sunday, brunch would make life brighter for Saturday night carousers. It would promote human happiness in other ways as well,” the piece read. “It is talk-compelling. It puts you in a good temper, it makes you satisfied with yourself and your fellow beings, it sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week.” More than 100 years later, author Guy Beringer’s words still ring true, especially in the UAE, where brunches are often used to mark special, sociable occasions.
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Engine: 2-litre
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
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Torque: 273Nm
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The Apple Card looks different from a traditional credit card — there's no number on the front and the users' name is etched in metal. The card expands the company's digital Apple Pay services, marrying the physical card to a virtual one and integrating both with the iPhone. Its attributes include quick sign-up, elimination of most fees, strong security protections and cash back.
What does it cost?
Apple says there are no fees associated with the card. That means no late fee, no annual fee, no international fee and no over-the-limit fees. It also said it aims to have among the lowest interest rates in the industry. Users must have an iPhone to use the card, which comes at a cost. But they will earn cash back on their purchases — 3 per cent on Apple purchases, 2 per cent on those with the virtual card and 1 per cent with the physical card. Apple says it is the only card to provide those rewards in real time, so that cash earned can be used immediately.
What will the interest rate be?
The card doesn't come out until summer but Apple has said that as of March, the variable annual percentage rate on the card could be anywhere from 13.24 per cent to 24.24 per cent based on creditworthiness. That's in line with the rest of the market, according to analysts
What about security?
The physical card has no numbers so purchases are made with the embedded chip and the digital version lives in your Apple Wallet on your phone, where it's protected by fingerprints or facial recognition. That means that even if someone steals your phone, they won't be able to use the card to buy things.
Is it easy to use?
Apple says users will be able to sign up for the card in the Wallet app on their iPhone and begin using it almost immediately. It also tracks spending on the phone in a more user-friendly format, eliminating some of the gibberish that fills a traditional credit card statement. Plus it includes some budgeting tools, such as tracking spending and providing estimates of how much interest could be charged on a purchase to help people make an informed decision.
* Associated Press
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
The Equaliser 2
Director Antoine Fuqua
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Emergency
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Spare
Profile
Company name: Spare
Started: March 2018
Co-founders: Dalal Alrayes and Saurabh Shah
Based: UAE
Sector: FinTech
Investment: Own savings. Going for first round of fund-raising in March 2019
Unresolved crisis
Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a bitter conflict since 2014, when Ukraine’s Kremlin-friendly president was ousted, Moscow annexed Crimea and then backed a separatist insurgency in the east.
Fighting between the Russia-backed rebels and Ukrainian forces has killed more than 14,000 people. In 2015, France and Germany helped broker a peace deal, known as the Minsk agreements, that ended large-scale hostilities but failed to bring a political settlement of the conflict.
The Kremlin has repeatedly accused Kiev of sabotaging the deal, and Ukrainian officials in recent weeks said that implementing it in full would hurt Ukraine.
