The faceoff win belongs to the winger, not the centre

A draw is credited to whoever touched the puck first, which describes almost nothing about who actually won it.

Credit for a faceoff goes to a stick. That is the whole rule, more or less: puck drops, one stick moves it back cleanly, that centre gets a tick in a column and a percentage that follows him around for his entire career.

Now watch a defensive zone draw properly. The centres tie up. Nine times in ten they tie up, because two professionals with similar hand speed will cancel each other, and the puck sits there for half a second doing nothing. What decides the sequence is the left winger stepping across to seal the opposing centre's body, the right winger arriving on the boards to beat the other winger to a puck that has squirted sideways, and the defenceman who has already turned his hips towards the corner he expects it to reach.

None of that is in the number. The centre who cleanly won a puck that then got picked off by the opposing point man is credited with a win. The centre who lost the draw but whose winger stripped it two feet later is credited with a loss. So the statistic measures the first contact in a five-second battle and then calls the whole battle by that name.

I think this matters more than the usual "faceoffs are overrated" argument, which is a different claim entirely. Faceoffs are not overrated. Defensive zone draws with a tired line on the ice are among the most predictive short sequences in the game. It is the attribution that is broken.

The practical consequence is worse than a bad column in a spreadsheet. Teams pay for centres with high percentages and then put wingers next to them who have never been coached on the seal, and the unit loses pucks that the number says it won. Meanwhile the coach who drills all five players on their draw responsibilities gets no statistical credit for it at all, because his centre's percentage looks the same.

If you want a better version, it exists and is not complicated: measure possession of the puck three seconds after the drop, by team, in that zone. Anybody with tracking data can build it in an afternoon.

Until somebody does, the faceoff percentage on the broadcast graphic is a hand speed contest being sold as a team outcome.