When Lars Eller lined up opposite Winnipeg Jets forward Adam Lowry on Tuesday evening, the odds were in the Penguins’ favor — as they often have been this season.
The Penguins held a 1-0 lead and were midway through an extended power play caused by Brenden Dillon’s match penalty. Eller, with better odds to win the faceoff than Lowry, did so.
Fourteen seconds later, Jeff Carter pocketed the first of two power-play goals for the Penguins in their 3-0 win over the Jets at PPG Paints Arena.
While it took more than winning a draw to put one past Winnipeg’s All-Star goalie Connor Hellebuyck, keeping the puck with the Penguins instead of having to depart the offensive zone to retrieve it certainly didn’t hurt. That’s been a familiar occurrence this season, with coach Mike Sullivan’s Penguins winning the highest rate of faceoffs in the NHL through 47 games.
”I think anything that happens 65 to 70 times in a game is important. It’s one of the subtleties of the game,” Sullivan said. “It’s one of those small details that can be very impactful on the penalty kill or the power play, for example.
”If you can win that first draw on either side of the special teams, it sets up an opportunity for success.”
More often than not, the Penguins’ work on draws hasn’t been particularly beneficial to a power play that ranks 30th in the league with a conversion rate a tick above 14%. But it’s certainly been beneficial to a penalty kill that’s slotted at 12th as of Wednesday afternoon.
Five players have regularly taken faceoffs for the Penguins this season, and all but Evgeni Malkin — who is just a few fractions below with a 49.67% clip — are above 50%. Three of them — Eller, Carter and Noel Acciari — are frequent penalty killers, too.
No player on the Penguins has a higher success rate (64%) on faceoffs this season than Carter — not even Sidney Crosby, who leads the NHL in wins and is having a career year at the dot.
It’s straightforward, but the prowess players like Eller, Carter and Acciari are demonstrating on faceoffs has made things easier for the Penguins penalty kill.
”You’d like to get the puck out of your end. That should have killed 15 to 30 seconds, anywhere in there at the start of the kill,” Bryan Rust said. “[You] try to get their power play out of the rhythm. So [if] they win the draw, then, all of a sudden, they’re just in their setup, snapping it around.”
Much has been made about the Penguins’ veteran-laden roster, which started the season with an average age over 30 years old, the only team north of that watermark. While the Penguins’ team skating speed is below league average, per the NHL’s EDGE tracking data, there have been some benefits to counteract not having many youthful players to turn to.
Sullivan discussed how the “wisdom” Crosby, 36, and Carter, 39, have each accrued in their respective careers makes them each stellar players on faceoffs. Neither Crosby nor Carter fully blossomed into adept players at the dot until the last few seasons.
”They evolve with their strategies,” Sullivan said. “They work at it, and that’s a daily endeavor. We talk about that all the time with every aspect of our game.”
Of course, the responsibility to win a faceoff doesn’t fall solely on whoever is eagerly awaiting the linesman to drop the puck. Sullivan estimated that seven out of 10 faceoffs result in the puck being up for grabs rather than definitively secured by one team.
While he commended the work of his center icemen as a whole this season, Sullivan highlighted the other forwards who’ve been eager to pounce.
”It’s incumbent upon the flanks, the guys on the flanks to get in and help and win those loose-puck battles,” Sullivan said. “It’s a collective effort on all faceoffs. And so I think the guys have done a pretty good job in that regard.”
With his centers and wings working in unison, Sullivan’s squad is easily faring as well as it ever has on faceoffs during his eight seasons and change in Pittsburgh.
The 2022-23 Penguins finished ninth in the NHL, the best under Sullivan’s watch so far, excluding this season. They’ve averaged a 17th-place finish during his past eight campaigns at the helm.
It would unquestionably behoove the Penguins more to have further strong showings from its extra-skater attack like Tuesday night’s, just their seventh game this season with multiple power-play goals.
But the Penguins know they’ve got a clear strength at their disposal inside the faceoff circle. Taking advantage of it has been a groupwide effort for a team looking to claw its way into playoff position.
”We’ve got a lot of our centermen who’ve been around the league for a long time and guys who know how to win them,” Rust said. “I think it doesn’t fall solely on those guys. It’s the guys who are in there on the line of scrimmage, too. Try to help out as best we can.”
