Everyone is in place but Sidney Crosby.
It’s a game night at PPG Paints Arena and all defensemen are in position, as are the wingers at the top and bottom of the neutral zone faceoff circle.
As the referee and opposing center await his arrival for the opening faceoff, Crosby delays just a few more seconds, slowly skating by teammates and issuing them a stick tap as if to communicate some gentle pregame encouragement.
Now Crosby gets lined up, his stance widened and stick gripped tightly.
His eyes fixated on the puck as it leaves the referee’s hands, sticks collide and Crosby swings his body around, getting the puck to a teammate.
Crosby has managed this result thousands of times in his career.
He’s won the faceoff and the Pittsburgh Penguins have possession.
‘An important element of the game’
Whenever he decides to hang up the skates, Crosby’s distinguished hockey career will offer no shortage of accomplishments, individual and team, worthy of continued celebration.
Despite being one of Crosby’s enduring talents, faceoff prowess will likely be decidedly down that list.
At the start of this season, Crosby began his 20th NHL campaign within striking distance of longtime Boston Bruin Patrice Bergeron for the most faceoffs won in league history (15,182).
Early in the second period Tuesday vs. Sean Monahan of the Columbus Blue Jackets, Crosby officially overtook Bergeron for career wins in the faceoff circle, a statistic which has been cataloged in the NHL only since 1997-98.
Following Tuesday night, Crosby sits at 15,193 total wins.
Through 1,314 NHL games, Crosby has taken a total of 28,832 faceoffs (also the most in recorded league history), with a lifetime winning percentage of 52.7%.
A surplus of abilities have helped propel Crosby to three Stanley Cup championships, two Olympic gold medals, multiple scoring titles and MVPs as well as a host of other achievements.
Yet inside the house of hockey where Crosby resides, attention to detail in the faceoff circle has been a key part of a strong foundation.
“It’s an important skill as a center iceman in this league,” coach Mike Sullivan said. “Anything that happens 60-75 times in a game is important — that’s the way we look at faceoffs, regardless of what zone it’s in. If you’re in the defensive zone, it’s avoiding a potential scoring chance off a clean win. If it’s in the offensive zone, it’s potentially creating an opportunity off the won faceoff. If it’s in the neutral zone, it’s possession.
“No matter where it is in the rink, it’s an important element of the game. I think Sid values that.”
Aversion to complacency
Crosby’s approach to faceoffs is a microcosm of how he’s treated other facets of his game over the years, guided by a strong desire to be elite.
While Bergeron had two professional campaigns under his belt by the time Crosby broke into the NHL in 2005-06, their careers largely overlapped, featuring 48 regular-season games against one another, as well as the 2013 Eastern Conference Finals, which Boston swept.
Bergeron’s fixture as Boston’s first-line center brought him to countless battles with Crosby inside the faceoff circle.
Bergeron, a six-time Selke Trophy winner as the NHL’s best defensive forward, also ranks first all-time in short-handed draws taken (3,535).
Extended action on the penalty kill gave Bergeron a further first-hand look at Crosby’s faceoff skills when the Penguins were on the power play.
“I feel like over the years, he’s just evolved,” Bergeron said. “He worked on his craft, and it goes along with who he is as a person. He’s never satisfied and always wants to get better and improve. Over time, he just kept getting better in the faceoff circle in the way that he took them. He modified a few things (and) he changed.
“His approach has been very impressive to see, his growth to continue evolving and just get better and better every year in the faceoff circle. It goes along with who he is and the type of player he’s been his whole career in wanting to be just an overall amazing player.”
Penguins assistant general manager Jason Spezza was a player peer of Crosby’s for the majority of his own NHL career (2002-22).
Spezza, who ranks 16th all-time in faceoff wins (9,636), admired Crosby’s physical and tactical combination in the faceoff circle.
“Similar to his game, he is brilliant,” Spezza said. “He makes adjustments on the fly as well as anyone, he is extremely strong on his stick, which makes him really hard to beat on draws, and he also has really good hand-eye coordination and is a student of the game.
“There’s definitely a cat-and-mouse element when you’re going up against someone with the intelligence of Sid, for sure.”
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‘It’s a mindset’
Crosby did not pause long when considering if, through nearly two decades of going at it with opposing centers in the faceoff circle, one singular attribute ranks atop the pile in the pursuit of consistently winning draws.
“You have to go in there willing to compete — that’s what it really comes down to,” Crosby said. “That number (referring to his 28,000-plus career faceoffs taken) — that’s thousands and thousands of instances where you’re taking a draw. You have to be ready to compete on all of those.
“If you have the mentality that you want to go in there and you take it serious, even on nights where you don’t feel sharp or as fast or maybe the other guy that’s doing something that’s tougher, I think you’ll find a way to at least trade 50-50 pucks and ultimately get possession.”
Bergeron concurred.
Centers who seek to become formidable at taking faceoffs must enter the circle with a certain outlook and demeanor.
“A faceoff is your first one-on-one battle of your shift or night,” Bergeron said. “It’s not always about winning your faceoff on the first try. It’s about digging in and bearing down, making sure you’re staying strong and winning the second and third opportunity where the puck is just laying there — finding a way to get it. I think it’s a mindset.”
A wide spectrum of intent and results
As could be said of every individual statistic, faceoff win percentages vary greatly across the NHL on a year-to-year basis.
For example, Connor McDavid owns only a 46.7% win rate, which ranks 79th in the NHL, while Nathan MacKinnon has won 48% of his faceoffs.
Crosby’s 56.0% success rate ranks 20th.
Last year in the faceoff department, Crosby posted a career-high, winning 1,090 out of 1,872 draws (58.2%).
As of Jan. 8, only three players have faceoff win rates north of 60%: Aleksander Barkov (NHL-best 61.7%), Claude Giroux (60.7%) and Vincent Trocheck (60.0%).
Countless variables go into determining who wins and loses faceoffs, but to Bergeron’s trained eyes, there are plenty of indicators immediately visible that suggest which centers are capable of tipping the odds in their favor, even if slightly.
“Sometimes you look at two centermen who are going into a faceoff and just by the look, the demeanor, the way they’re approaching, the way they’re set up, I could probably tell you who’s going to win it,” Bergeron said.
“I’m not always right, (but) you can tell some guys are really in there to win it and some guys are just in there.”
During his career with the Ottawa Senators, Dallas Stars and Toronto Maple Leafs, Spezza tried to instill a sense of urgency and value among teammates when it came to prowess in the faceoff circle.
On Spezza’s clubs and around the NHL, attitudes could differ as to recognizing the importance of every individual faceoff.
But he chose to view faceoffs as a major nightly building block that could play a big role in every phase of the game.
“There’s guys that take a large amount of pride in their draws and there’s guys that I think put less thought in that would just try to get the play started and wouldn’t prioritise it as much,” Spezza said.
“Everything in hockey, you try to break down into small moments to lead to better big moments. Some guys go in there and you don’t know what they’re going to bring, but other guys, you know you’re in for a long night in terms of the battle off the draw.”
Know thy enemy
While mentality looms large in the ongoing act of consistently winning faceoffs, there are tactics to consider, as well.
The situational nature of faceoffs — whether, for example, Crosby is taking one in the offensive zone on the power-play vs. the opening faceoff of a period at center ice — dictates a multitude of aspects pertinent to a center’s approach.
Granted, the objective at hand will primarily be to come away with possession.
But how that’s achieved — if Crosby opts to use a forehand or backhand approach, whether he wants to push the puck back to a defenseman or sweep it out to a winger — is largely circumstantial.
In the short time Crosby is in the faceoff circle awaiting a referee or linesman to drop the puck, he also looks for clues offered by his opponent.
“Part of it is, you see how they’re lined up,” Crosby said. “Depending on how they’re lined up, you can tell where they’re going to try to win the faceoff. You see how they’re lined up and you see how they’re positioned. If both things line up, then you usually have a good idea.
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“If those things don’t line up, then you tend to focus on just making sure you execute what you’re trying to do, whatever that is. It all happens pretty quick, to be honest with you.”
An element of Bergeron’s method with faceoffs was trying to understand as much about those he’d be seeing in the circle on a given night.
“If they were lefties, righties, what they liked to do on their forehand or backhand and whatnot — I think I tried to take advantage of every little detail I could gather, whether it was video, talking to people or just from personal experience to turn that hopefully into my advantage,” Bergeron said.
‘A game of chess’
For longtime centers like Bergeron, Crosby and Spezza, all of whom displayed a similar attitude when it came to taking faceoffs, year after year of taking draws helped to create a mental library of opponents.
In their minds, internal files on opposing centers, with their respective strengths and strategic inclinations, would get created and stored away to be drawn upon whenever needed.
All that stockpiled information would thus come in handy when it was time to face a particular team or center.
“As you go along and you gain experience and get to know the other centermen that you’re facing, there’s tendencies, there’s things you’re used to, there’s things that you’re used to seeing that works against them,” Bergeron said.
“It’s almost like a game of chess where you’re trying to find different ways of beating each other, especially if you’re facing each other for many years. You get to know tendencies, what’s working, what doesn’t and guys adjust over time.”
Added Spezza: “Over the years, you kind of just end up building like a book in your head of all the centermen.”
Crosby himself has been around the block enough times to have built a familiarity with most of the NHL’s centers.
However, that doesn’t mean blind spots don’t exist, nor does an encyclopedic knowledge of opponents translate to complete success in the faceoff circle.
For Crosby, no amount of intel gathering minimizes the need to manage his own method of operations with faceoffs.
From Year 1 to Year 20, a willingness to evolve and make tweaks continues to guide his approach.
“I’ve taken a lot of faceoffs against a lot of guys and have a pretty good idea of what everybody’s strength is,” Crosby said. “If there’s guys that have done specifically well against me, then maybe I want to switch something up or maybe I want to get a few more reps in that game to see if it was just a bad night or maybe I need to adjust something. It’s a constant — you’re just trying to adapt.”
Times have changed
The game of hockey has undergone significant change with regard to both overall style of play and the NHL rulebook in the nearly two decades since Crosby debuted.
As it pertains specifically to faceoffs, Crosby has been a witness to significant alterations.
Crosby’s rookie campaign of 2005-06 was the final year before the NHL amended its Rule 76.2, stipulating that moving forward, all faceoffs would take place at one of nine faceoff spots located on the ice.
“I can remember my first year, we didn’t take faceoffs at dots all the time,” Crosby said. “We’d take faceoffs just in areas where the puck was touched. At some points, there were no hash marks on a faceoff.”
Spezza imagined it would likely come as a shock for the latest generation of hockey players to be told how faceoffs used to be conducted in the not-too-distant past.
“We used to just put the puck down in random spots and play from there,” he said. “I think if you explained (that) to some kids now, they wouldn’t even know that we used to just put the puck anywhere.”
Unsurprisingly, Crosby’s rookie year faceoff percentage (45.5%) was the lowest win rate he’s posted over the course of his career by a considerable margin.
Making his NHL debut less than two months after his 18th birthday and entering NHL competition directly from the Canadian juniors, a significant component of the learning curve for Crosby in the faceoff circle centered around his physique, particularly how it stacked up against more seasoned opponents.
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“You’re not as strong at 18 years old and you’re doing it against grown men who have been doing it for a long time,” Crosby said. “At that time, you could also use your hand on a faceoff. There were some good veteran guys who were really good at using their hand, not just their stick, but being able to use their hand on a tie-up.”
In line with the rules and norms of the day when Crosby arrived in the NHL, centers put their more developed frames to good use.
“I think centermen were probably generally a little meaner, back in the day, to each other, with the physicality and in the moments after the draws were won. It was more physical warfare back than there is now,” Spezza said. “More was tolerated.”
A physical toll
Crosby recounted a conversation with fellow Penguins center Noel Acciari regarding the physical strain of taking faceoffs on a nightly basis.
The two wondered, half-seriously, how many faceoffs equal the physical exertion of playing one hockey game: 100? 1,000?
Whatever answer Acciari or Crosby could come up with would be purely subjective.
But the overarching point of their conversation stands: Regularly taking faceoffs incurs a cost on the body.
“A lot of wear and tear,” Acciari said. “You’ve got to be strong in your upper-body and forearms. Your fingers get whacked a lot of the times in the draw, just being able to maintain that. (Crosby’s) done it for so long. It’s so impressive how many draws he’s taken. It’s definitely a grind, but I think he’s learned a way to keep doing what he does.”
Due to rule changes and the evolution of hockey, faceoffs might not be as intense as what Spezza experienced over his first handful of years in the league.
Still, there should be no doubt about the consistent extra effort required of centers in the faceoff circle.
“There’s a mental fortitude behind going in every draw and treating it like it’s the most important play of the night and then there’s also the physical toll which becomes a lot of battles between centermen that I don’t think people realize goes on, the physicality of it,” Spezza said. “It’s the first battle of every shift. I think it probably gets overlooked quite a bit.”
Staying committed
Like all NHL centers, Bergeron and Spezza included, Crosby’s faceoff success rate has fluctuated over the years.
But if the season ended today, Crosby would have put together the best back-to-back yearly faceoff win rates of his career (58.2% and 55.8%).
A combination of skill and approach has helped achieve that.
“Obviously, you have to have a skill level, a certain hand-eye coordination (and) there’s a lot of strategy that goes into winning faceoffs, but you also have to put a lot of work in,” Sullivan said. “You’ve got to take reps, you’ve got to go against people in practice and during games. I think Sid prides himself in that aspect of his game.
“It’s a combination of his ability level but also his will and want to be good at it. He’s willing to put the time in to work at it and get better at it.”
Over his career, Bergeron has recognized the long-term, team-wide benefits of winning as many faceoffs as possible, compared to the cost of losing them, influencing his own consistent approach in the circle.
“To me, the possession time is going to change drastically whether you win them or you lose them,” Bergeron said. “Obviously, you’re going to have the puck a lot more if your team is winning faceoffs and having a good night versus the opposite. That dictates the time of possession on a lot of occasions. It helps starting with the puck — that’s very cliche, but that’s just how it is.”
As Crosby plays on, maintaining dominance in the faceoff circle to the greatest extent possible remains a priority.
“It’s something,” he said, “you want to take seriously.”