Centre (ice Hockey) - Faceoffs

Faceoffs

It is almost always the centre's job to handle faceoffs for his or her team. Centres employ many different tactics to win faceoffs that take advantage their strength or swiftness.

Faceoff techniques and preferences vary widely from player to player depending on that player's skill at taking faceoffs, speed, strength, and agility. Although faceoff techniques differ greatly, it is almost universal now that the centre reverses his lower hand and takes the faceoff on his backhand in order to gain more strength when pulling the puck.

Bigger, heavier, and stronger centres may prefer to use strength tactics such as tying up the opposing centre and winning the puck with his feet or overpowering the opponent by ripping the puck away using sheer strength. Smaller, quicker centres may employ swiftness tactics such as trying to contact the puck before his opponent has a chance to get his stick in the dot, or the slide technique where he allows his opponent access to the dot easily so he can slide his stick underneath and pull the puck back out.

Faceoffs are critical to a team's success on offence or defence. To this end, centres that may be deficient in other areas, especially offensively, can still have value to a team if they are excellent faceoff takers. Journeyman NHL centre Yanic Perreault was offensively limited for much of his career, yet was able to survive in the NHL due to his excellence in the faceoff circle. Perreault is considered one of the best faceoff men in history. Faceoffs are often used as a measure of defensive effectiveness, and good faceoff takers play many minutes on the penalty kill and in late game lead situations where quickly gaining possession of the puck is of vital importance.