You don't become the best hockey player in the world without making a few enemies along the way. To the San Jose Sharks -- and Logan Couture in particular -- Sidney Crosby is Public Enemy No. 1 right now.
Sidney Crosby is not cheating on faceoffs, he’s just that good
There’s actually a simple explanation to Sidney Crosby’s success in the faceoff dot: he’s just better at it than anyone else right now.
Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
Let's go back to Wednesday night, Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final. It's overtime between the Penguins and Sharks, just a few minutes into the extra frame. Crosby lines up to the faceoff dot, but there's something different about this play. Kris Letang and Brian Dumoulin have swapped positions at the point, with Letang close to Crosby on the left side. The Penguins captain wins the faceoff and the puck goes right to Letang. Instead of firing off a bomb from the blue line, the defenseman fakes twice on a shot then passes to Conor Sheary, the eventual goal-scorer, for the Game 2 victory.
Our own Penguins blog has an amazing breakdown of the set play itself, one that was entirely drawn up by Crosby just moments before the faceoff. The captain even promised to win the draw that eventually gave the Penguins the 2-0 series lead.
However, that goal was overshadowed by Couture’s accusation that the Sidney Crosby cheats on faceoffs.
Logan Couture says Crosby wins offensive zone faceoffs so cleanly because he cheats. Says he gets away with it because of who he is.
— Craig Custance (@CraigCustance) June 2, 2016
Here’s the quote in full, via Yahoo!‘s Sean Leahy:
Question: “Sid seems to have an ability to win those faceoffs so clean, especially in the offensive one. What’s the challenge when he does that?”
Couture: “He cheats. He gets away with that. He’s Sidney Crosby.”
Q: “How does he cheat? What does he do?”
C: “He times them and yet they don’t kick them out for some reason; probably because of who he is.”
Crosby has won a crazy amount of faceoffs in this series -- 71 percent of them in Game 2 and 56 percent in Game 1 -- but is that high number an indication of cheating? And what does “cheating” really mean in this case?
You may not know, but once upon a time Crosby was terrible at faceoffs! The art of the faceoff is a tough business. The section in the rulebook detailing how faceoffs work and how they should be policed looks more like an exact science than a drop of the puck. Players must be square to their opponents, players have intricate rules as to when and where their sticks can be on the ice before a puck drop, etc.
In fact, the NHL added a change to the rule book this year that they hoped would increase the chances of an offensive zone score. Defending zone players now have to put their stick on the ice first, making it harder to get at the puck when on the draw.
Crosby’s 472 offensive zone draw wins was the best in the league this year, yet his 51.7 overall faceoff percentage was just barely in the top 50. To say he gets special treatment is quite the stretch. In fact, Crosby is one of the most tormented players in the league due to the fact that, oh yeah, he is the best player in the NHL. Case in point, Joe Thornton’s cross-check that went uncalled, or the one issued by Brandon Dubinsky earlier in the season that earned the forward a one-game suspension.
And to Couture’s point of “timing,” isn’t that the whole point of a faceoff? To out-time your opponent in the dot?
Crosby himself has a 51.7 career faceoff percentage, winning just a fraction more than he's losing. This year alone, Crosby's number pales in comparison to Jonathan Toews' 58.6 percent. Why aren't we accusing Toews, too, of committing faceoff fraud?
Unless it’s a league-wide conspiracy, Crosby is just head-and-shoulders above the Sharks at taking faceoffs. It’s why he’s heralded as the NHL’s best player, because he works harder than anyone in the league to do the little things better than everyone else.
* * *
Nick Bonino’s amazing goal to win Game 1
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