No Sharks game today so let’s talk about Logan Couture and his faceoff issues – because he’s the only one that seems to have a major problem out of the four regular centermen on the San Jose Sharks.
Logan Couture is considered the Sharks shutdown center – a two-way guy who can get the job done against the other top lines of the opposition. One major thing that Couture does pretty poorly in comparison to other shutdown centers in the league is his ability to win faceoffs.
Here’s a chart of the Sharks positional centermen (I’m not including Pavelski, who is an animal in the circle, or Marleau, who is a few shades better than Couture, because they are positional wingers now) with their faceoff percentage per zone:
Aside from having the lowest total faceoff percentage out of everyone, it’s very concerning to see how poor his defensive zone faceoffs are. That’s a pretty important zone, especially for a player heralded as having shutdown capabilities.
Couture has taken 23 faceoffs in the defensive zone while shorthanded this year and has only won three of them. That’s a 13% faceoff win percentage in, arguably, the most important faceoff situation in the game.
Just as a poor free-throw shooter is glued to the line in practice to sort his flaws out by repetitive torture, Logan Couture should be attached to Joe Thornton and chained to the dasher boards – with only enough slack to reach the faceoff dot – until he learns how to win a draw.
If Couture was a fourth line center then his numbers would at least be acceptable because the expectations of him wouldn't be very high. That’s clearly not the case, he’s the Sharks second line center and, in a few years, will be the Sharks number one center. You can’t have your future number one center winning so few draws, nor can your current second line center be so porous.
The defensive zone problems are definitely the most severe because the Sharks don’t have the league’s best defense. You need to – at the very least – give them a 50% chance to start a zone exit off the faceoff. Pinning down the Sharks defence in their own zone to start a sequence over half of the time is only contributing to the woes of the backend.
Here are the actual number totals for each zone, without bright colors, in order of Offensive Zone-Neutral Zone-Defensive Zone.
Thornton 51.1% - 63.1% - 59.4% Couture 45.5% - 47.8% - 41.2% Sheppard 41.8% - 56.7% - 53.5% Desjardins 43.8% - 50.5% - 51.7%
The numbers are much uglier without the bright colors.
Couture has to develop his faceoff ability because right now – with these numbers – he’s nothing more than a lost winger playing the middle of the ice. That’s not how you want one of your top-six centers defined. The Joe’s can teach him – there’s no excuse for his faceoff win percentage to remain so poor.
Dan Boyle Tribute Video
In case you didn’t catch the video from the Rangers/Sharks game, here it is:
Thanks for reading.