Request -- OT win % when winning opening face-off

[bigdaddio]

My guess it's upwards of 80% but I can't seem to find this stat anywhere. Does anybody have access to this statistic?

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[Bear of Bad News]

I don't have an active Athletic account, but this preview suggests that there's data inside:

The Stars have a clear approach to overtime. Does it actually matter?

The Stars' overtime strategy — “Get the draw" — is obvious. But how does it correlate to wins?

theathletic.com

 

[SnowblindNYR]

I think 80% sounds way too high.

 

[Michael Farkas]

^ that - and also, wouldn't you want a qualifier of there being no other stoppages between the opening faceoff and a goal...? Otherwise, the opening faceoff is irrelevant, no?

 

[bigdaddio]

^ that - and also, wouldn't you want a qualifier of there being no other stoppages between the opening faceoff and a goal...? Otherwise, the opening faceoff is irrelevant, no?

Yes and no. If we were to play a game where we flip a coin and I take heads you take tails. If I win the coin toss, I win 80% of the time. The other 20% of the time we flip again and the winner of that wins 80% of the remaining times and so on. Whoever wins the first coin toss has a significant advantage.

So you could just look at opening face-off no other face-offs but end result should be similar.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

^ that - and also, wouldn't you want a qualifier of there being no other stoppages between the opening faceoff and a goal...? Otherwise, the opening faceoff is irrelevant, no?

Counterpoint: if the Avalanche win the opening faceoff against the Kraken to start overtime (and a goal is not scored before the next whistle), is there an additional marginal chance that the next faceoff is in the Avalanche's offensive zone? (Which would correlate with an additional chance to win on the second faceoff?)

I'm trying to think this out as a Markov process.

(I also guess that 80% is way too high under the conditions stated in the opening post, and my best guess would be 60%).

 

[Michael Farkas]

Yes, yes, a Markov process...of course...sorry, I have to take this call real quick *furiously googles that term*

Yeah, I had considered that too...like, what if winning that draw draws a penalty...so, now you have an attack zone draw and a man advantage. I just felt like that was such a rabbit hole given the prompt that I didn't want to distract too much from the OP's question haha

I think 80% is exorbitant too.

Someone has a bunch of good faceoff stats out there...handedness and zones and what not. But unless there's a faceoff log in there, I think you'd have to string this together from play by play data, right? The initial query is probably pretty easy, but like most things, a better answer is harder...

 

[morehockeystats]

I witnessed the following gambit by CBJ:
Start - Jenner-Laine-Werenski. Jenner wins the starting draw to Werenski and bolts off the ice, letting Voracek in. It paid off.

Once I rebuild my db with the new API, I can run the stats. I assume only the 3v3 OTs are relevant, right?

 

[bigdaddio]

I witnessed the following gambit by CBJ:
Start - Jenner-Laine-Werenski. Jenner wins the starting draw to Werenski and bolts off the ice, letting Voracek in. It paid off.

Once I rebuild my db with the new API, I can run the stats. I assume only the 3v3 OTs are relevant, right?

Yes.

 

[morehockeystats]

There have been 2218 regular season games that went to OT and beyond since the 2015/16 season.
Out of these 1458 ended in OT.
Out of these 751 (51.5%) were won by the team who won the opening faceoff as well.

HTH.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

Very interesting!

 

[bigdaddio]

There have been 2218 regular season games that went to OT and beyond since the 2015/16 season.
Out of these 1458 ended in OT.
Out of these 751 (51.5%) were won by the team who won the opening faceoff as well.

HTH.

That is surprising and may kill my hypothesis, but do you have data from the last 4 years? I don't recall when the current meta took over of skating around waiting for the other team to tire out or make a bad change, but it's certainly in the last 4 years.

 

[Michael Farkas]

I was expecting this to be more or less random, but basically 50/50 on the nose...that really shows you how worthless NZ faceoffs are (I just got kicked out of the coaches' union)...

And yes, the last four or so years is when it got over-coached.

 

[morehockeystats]

Since 2019/20 (included) we have 1091 games, 723 of them ending in OT, and in 399 of them (55.2%) the winner of the opening faceoff won the game.

 

[morehockeystats]

Note that the importance of that faceoff is watered down further by the fact 1/3 of the OT games goes to SO. So even for the last 4 years, it's 53.3% from the FO win to OT win.

NB. I didn't discard the PP starts of the OT. Without these, it's 371/677 = 54.8% since 19/20,

 

[bigdaddio]

Since 2019/20 (included) we have 1091 games, 723 of them ending in OT, and in 399 of them (55.2%) the winner of the opening faceoff won the game.

Thank you. Awesome stuff.

There is clearly a relatively large advantage to winning opening FO in OT, but not nearly as large as I expected.

 

[morehockeystats]

Thank you. Awesome stuff.

There is clearly a relatively large advantage to winning opening FO in OT, but not nearly as large as I expected.

You realize that at EV, when taking SO outcomes into account, it's watered down to below 53%?

 

[LT]

Why just the opening faceoff? Wouldn't overall OT faceoff % be an even better indicator for the answer you are trying to get?

 

[Bear of Bad News]

Why just the opening faceoff? Wouldn't overall OT faceoff % be an even better indicator for the answer you are trying to get?

Their premise is that teams win the opening faceoff and then play keep-a-way until they're best positioned to score.

 

[LT]

Their premise is that teams win the opening faceoff and then play keep-a-way until they're best positioned to score.

Right. I think a better way to phrase what I'm asking is: what makes the opening OT faceoff different from any other OT faceoff?

 

[Bear of Bad News]

Right. I think a better way to phrase what I'm asking is: what makes the opening OT faceoff different from any other OT faceoff?

I'm genuinely curious what percentage of overtime non-opening faceoffs occur somewhere other than one's team's offensive zone.

 

[LT]

I'm genuinely curious what percentage of overtime non-opening faceoffs occur somewhere other than one's team's offensive zone.

In the same vein, I've wondered how much faceoff wins at the start of a PP affects the result of the PP.

Stuff I've thought about but never bothered to actually crunch the numbers for.

 

[morehockeystats]

I'm genuinely curious what percentage of overtime non-opening faceoffs occur somewhere other than one's team's offensive zone.

I'll check later, but I'd assume offsides are the main cause.

There supposed to be an advantage of stick last in the faceoff. The home team gets that advantage in the opening faceoff of overtime. I'll need to check if there's any correlation.

 

[morehockeystats]

I'm genuinely curious what percentage of overtime non-opening faceoffs occur somewhere other than one's team's offensive zone.

Since 2015/16 - 441 out of 3764 faceoffs (11.7%) in Reg. OT. happened in NZ.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

Since 2015/16 - 441 out of 3764 faceoffs (11.7%) in Reg. OT. happened in NZ.

Thanks! That must be non-opening faceoffs? Counting the 2,218 overtime games I'd expect one per overtime.