TAMPA, Fla. — The Rangers were have-nots at the dots for 14 seasons, but they’ve done an about-face in this important area.
The team sits in first place in the Metropolitan Division as it heads to Pittsburgh for a Saturday matinee with the Penguins, followed by a Sunday afternoon date with the Islanders at the Garden.
While Artemi Panarin’s 88 points, top-tier goaltending from Igor Shesterkin and Jonathan Quick and exquisite special teams units are responsible for much of that success, the Rangers are saving some of the credit for the turnaround on faceoffs.
The Blueshirts enter Saturday ranked fifth in the NHL with a faceoff winning percentage of 52.8 percent.
While that doesn’t sound like cause for a parade, it’s better than where they’ve been.
From the 2009-10 season on, the Blueshirts have not ranked higher than 14th in the league in any season, and they’ve been under 50 percent in each of those campaigns except for 2012-13, when they posted a statistically improbable 1,410 wins and 1,410 losses.
“Everybody wants to start with the puck, and the faceoff’s the starting point,” Rangers coach Peter Laviolette said. “It’s like anything: If you have the ball or the puck and it’s in your favor, then good things can happen.”
Or as Mika Zibanejad said, “We get to start with the puck; we don’t have to chase it.”
The linchpin is Vincent Trocheck, who ranks fifth among NHL centers who have taken at least 500 draws with a winning percentage of 59.3, according to StatMuse.
In the Rangers’ 3-1 victory over the Devils on Monday, Trocheck won 12 of his 16 draws (75 percent).
The next night in Raleigh, N.C., he won just 8 of 19 (42 percent) but got the biggest one — the last one that secured a 1-0 conquest of the second-place Hurricanes.
“Possession is a big part of the game, especially [when your team has] top players” Trocheck said. “Playing with Bread [Panarin], I want to get the puck in his hands as much as possible, so starting with the puck is huge.”
By way of context, the Rangers won 27 draws and lost 29 in their 6-3 loss to the Lightning on Thursday for a winning percentage of 48.2.
If they were to see those numbers every night for 82 games, that would still be better than what they achieved in any of the four seasons from 2018-19 through 2021-22.
The Rangers were cognizant of their past shortcomings and tried to address them when assembling Laviolette’s new coaching staff. Michael Peca, described by Laviolette as “an elite faceoff guy” during his 14-year playing career, was tasked with leading the way.
“He’s been great … talking [us] through, even in games. If he sees something, he can make a point to help out,” Zibanejad said of Peca. “[He strikes] a perfect balance [between] trying to be there and support and kind of letting you figure it out.
“I think you’ve got to find your own way. I don’t think [everyone] takes a faceoff the same way. Some people have strengths where other people have weaknesses. You just try to put guys in a situation where they can succeed.”
The Rangers have quite a few forwards in the black in this statistic.
Barclay Goodrow is at 54.8 and Jonny Brodzinski is at 50.5. Zibanejad is just below breakeven at 49.4.
Those three plus Trocheck have taken the lion’s share of the draws this season, but others have done well in smaller sample sizes, including Blake Wheeler (61.3), Kaapo Kakko (54.5) and Jimmy Vesey (50.0).
“Trocheck’s been at the forefront because of his numbers, but other guys have gone in there and we’re trying to work with everybody,” Laviolette said. “We’re trying to work with the wingers that jump in there and help out, trying to work with the aftermath of the actual faceoff and what we can do from there.”
Faceoff wins and losses aren’t awarded until a team possesses the puck, and there’s a lot that goes on between the time the two centers joust for the falling disk and one of the teams ultimately gets a hold of it.
“We have good centermen but obviously our wingers and [defensemen] have been helping out, too, winning the 50/50 pucks,” Zibanejad said. “I feel like there’s not a whole lot of clean wins, either way, and in the battles around the centermen, we’ve been doing a good job as a team.”
The Rangers have tried innovative ways to fix their faceoff mess, including inviting retired linesman Pierre Racicot to training camp before the 2021-22 season to school the centers on rules at the dots and give them advice on positioning, stance and what the officials expect from the players.
Racicot’s tutelage helped, as the Blueshirts jumped from a worst-in-the-NHL 44.5 percent in David Quinn’s final season to 48.1 percent in Gerard Gallant’s first.
“I thought it helped me a lot in terms of understanding the linesmen, the position of the linesman and where the puck would drop, and what they’re looking for to kick [a center from the faceoff],” Zibanejad said. “Just ways of talking to the linesman. It’s something I still have in my game and think about when I go into the faceoff circle.”
