Hockey sometimes gets a bad wrap when it comes to understanding the rules.
It can look complicated, but once you get the basics down the rest just takes a little time and effort to get figured out.
But faceoffs, an area of the game that can decide critical moments, are something of an unexplainable moment in sports. Unlike the jump-ball in basketball or a kickoff in football, in hockey, the immediate change in possession can be a bit of a magic trick.
Not that you, the fan, can’t see what is actually happening, but it’s not entirely obvious how one wins a faceoff.
In the most basic sense it’s a battle to see who can flip the puck back to a teammate, or at the very least keep it from the opponent. And as it turns out, there is a quite a lot more that goes in to winning a faceoff than you might imagine.
Penn State freshman forward Scott Conway is something of an expert in this department. He doesn’t lead the Nittany Lions in faceoff win percentage, but with 223 wins and 234 faceoff losses, Conway sits just a technical fraction under 50-percent success.
Only fellow teammate Casey Bailey has won more for Penn State with a 55-percent success rate in nearly 600 attempts this season. So for as far as this particular inquiry is concerned, Conway is perfectly capable of providing the world with some answers.
So what’s the trick?
“Every centerman has a different strategy for winning a draw,” Conway said on Tuesday. “When I first line up for a draw I look to see if he (his opponent) is a lefty or a righty. I’m better on my one side than my other (his right side, don’t tell anyone.) There are five or six ways to take a draw so you have to look and see how they’re lined up, where their stick is, how their feet are lined up. That’s all a part of deciding what you’re going to do.”
The first draw — Conway might lose that one. It is after all an instance in the game that requires a little bit of luck and even the best faceoff specialists can lose out in that department.
But as the game goes along, Conway might start to notice an opponents tendencies or what sort of maneuvers the other guy prefers to take on the draw. And that’s when the other team might get into trouble.
“After a couple of draws in the game you start to notice the trends and what they like to do. You keep the numbers in the back of your head and you know what kind of plays they’re going to do so you try to maneuver around those plays.”
Beyond that there is body language that can give it all away. Like an offensive lineman trying to get a head start on a defender, Conway can tell where you’re going before you even do.
“There are definitely (tells). If they’re low and facing one way you can tell they’re going to go that way. Little things like that.”
So maybe our chances of winning a draw again Conway aren’t very high, but it’s easy to see that one of the most important junctures in a game isn’t entirely luck.
And it isn’t entirely without its own little bit of sweet science.
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