Flames @ Sharks Post-Game - The Ides of the Middle Frame

one wonders how much that contributes to periods like the second last night.

It’s a killer on the PK, for sure. You’re already down a body, and then you have to start chasing.

As for the game, I can’t be too upset. They had one terrible PK (-6 chances) in the second, and otherwise were more or less even in a good team’s building. The Sharks are certainly a good team, but that’s not a team that would scare me like the Hawks.

Considering the quality of the opponent, I can’t be too upset with being outplayed for a period — which, like Robert points out, included a crazy PK series. I’m pretty chuffed right now.

The faceoffs were indeed the most glaring issue from my perspective last night, although they did fairly well with them on the later powerplays.

Yeah, other than the faceoffs (especially on the PK), I thought they played the Sharks even in their barn. I didn’t feel like the 2nd was that much of a cluster, other than the chances the Sharks generated on the PP (and a few minutes from the resulting momentum).

This is an issue I’ve noticed not just with the Flames but with other teams in the NHL, nobody’s perfect and I mean nobody who can say the Sharks played a good game last night because I sure the hell didn’t think so.

Just going to weigh in on faceoffs. To me it’s not a huge deal.

All my opinion, here goes:

If I wasn’t weren’t getting bi-period updates from Lee and Weekes about the faceoffs and if it wasn’t tracked on the stat sheets, I wouldn’t have noticed at all. Of course it affects possession but the fact that it’s barely trackable on the ice suggests it’s not as huge a factor as we think.

Recovering the puck is harder than starting with the puck. But even dominant faceoff teams need to recover the puck a lot, the majority of EV play happens more than half a shift away from a faceoff. Plus a lot of faceoffs happen in the neutral zone anyway, and the tilt from a win there is even smaller.

Really, faceoffs are just puck battles in open ice. Without the boards, it’s hard to get leverage. That’s why I think the best faceoff men in the league are only in the 55-60% range. They don’t track puck-battle-on-the-board % but A.) it would be more interesting, to me anyway, and B.) I bet the best players in the league would have %’s well north of 60.

On another note: has this road trip been as good as advertised? Didn’t get a chance to see the Detroit, Nashville or Phoenix games.

Face-offs probably aren’t a big deal for most teams because it largely cancels out.

The Flames are last in the league by face-off percentage win rate (45%) though – they’ve lost 141 more draws than they’ve won thus far. I’m going to go through Calgary ES own zone face-off losses later and I suspect that a portion of the big boys negative corsi rates have to do with starting without the puck in their own zone a bunch this year.

Just playing this by ear, but going off of Gabe’s stuff:

Calgary’s overall faceoff % is 45%, which all things being equal is 5% off the median (or so I assume). I’m going to assume that’s their EV% as well.

There’s about 30 O/D zone faceoffs per game at EV, so over the course of the year that’s 2460 faceoffs at stake. The Flames are on pace to lose 123 more EV in-zone faceoffs than the average team.

Assuming that each lost faceoff is equivalent to a 15-second 5on4 time, the Flames are experiencing this disadvantage for 1845 seconds for the season, or 31 minutes. Going by the rule of thumb of 0.1 goals per 5on4 minute, that’s 3.1 goal differential per year that this problem is costing us, over the average team that is.

Which is not trivial, I admit. That’s an entire standings point, and those are precious. And this is just EV stuff, no analysis of special teams where I suspect this problem is worse. Although I recall Matt doing some back-of-envelope stuff about PP faceoffs that suggested it was not worth too much either.

But I suspect there are bigger gains to be had in a forward corps who is willing and able to provide support when the puck’s deep in our zone.

I had a perfect view from where I was sitting on the save by Kipper in the 2nd – the most outrageous save I have ever witnessed.
I was struck by how many of the Sharks passes were intercepted by the Flames. ? Somewhat surprised to see how well the Flames cycled deep in the offensive zone against the NHL’s #1 team. All the stats about the faceoffs and being outplayed for one period …. whatever. Full marks for the win.

…that save was so good, it actually forced TSN to pick a highlight of the night from outside the Eastern time zone. I can only gather that someone at their office was battling insomnia, and so missed their bed time.