Morning skate notebook: Do faceoffs matter?

Hello from the Pepsi Center, where the Avs will hope to take a more consequential jump into the Western Conference playoff picture tonight against the Calgary Flames.

The Avs trail the Flames by two points in the standings. A regulation win, and not only would they be tied, but the Avs would still have two games in hand on them. Of course, the Avs have a few other teams they need to be concerned with in a chase for a spot, but let’s focus on the task at hand here.

No lineup changes from the other night. Anton Lindholm is healthy and ready to go, but Jared Bednar said the combination of him not practicing much of late and the solid play of guys like Duncan Siemens and David Warsofsky has him convinced it’s the right call keeping him out still.

Sven Andrighetto did a lot of skating this morning, albeit in the dreaded pumpkin jersey. Nothing new to report on Erik Johnson.

Here’s some video of Andrighetto:

Spencer Martin will be the backup goalie to Semyon Varlamov, as Andrew Hammond is now out with a concussion. How did he sustain the injury, you ask? Well, apparently he was hit on the head by a stick while sitting on the bench in the Vancouver game. A check was leveled against someone right where he was sitting, apparently, and he was knocked on the head with a stick.

If anyone has a clip of the incident, don’t be afraid to post it in the comments section, because I haven’t seen it.

Hammond, by the way, is on a one-way contract, worth $1.35 million.

So, I talked with a couple players this morning about faceoffs. The Avs are dead last in faceoff-winning percentage this season, at 43.9. That’s nearly FOUR points lower than the next-worst team, New Jersey.

I asked Nathan MacKinnon (0-for-7 last game) about this issue, and he wasn’t in the happiest of moods to discuss it.

“We were second in the league last year and got 48 points. I was pretty good on faceoffs last year, and what did it do for me?” MacKinnon said.

So, do faceoffs matter? The Avs were, indeed, second overall in faceoff-winning percentage last year, at 53.6.

MacKinnon said they matter more in power-play/penalty-kill situations, because you always want that puck either up or down a man. But he seemed to suggest that, well, maybe not otherwise.

What about Jared Bednar? What does he think?

“I’d love to win ’em all, at the end of the day,” he said.

But Bednar said he thinks it’s a combination of a couple guys not having as good a year in the dot as last (MacKinnon, Carl Soderberg) and then “a bunch of young guys” who are having to compete in a conference with some of the very best in the league at the skill.

Alexander Kerfoot, for instance, was just 3-for-10 the other night, but he knows that experience – or lack of it – matters a lot in faceoffs.

“If there’s any draws in question and they’re deciding between me and Joe Pavelski, then obviously he’s going to get the benefit of the doubt,” Kerfoot said. “I think, more than anything, it’s just being in the league a long time and learning guys’ tendencies. Obviously, if you’re in the league 15 years, you can learn a thing or two about winning a faceoff.”

“It’s experience, and it’s not just our centermen, it’s our team as a group. We’ve got some youth and inexperience on the dot and there are some ways our wings could help out with the way they line up and make it more of a team effort,” Bednar said. “They’re doing the best that they can. They’re working on it every day in practice and hopefully it comes around.”