Drop of the puck leaving Wild at big disadvantage

NASHVILLE - Jacques Lemaire ventures that of the nearly 30 shots the Wild gives up per game, 40 percent are directly the result of lost faceoffs.

"That's a lot," the Wild coach and Hall of Fame center said with a glare.

It's gotten to where, on offensive-zone power-play draws, Lemaire might as well take point man Brian Rolston and position him behind the Wild net 150 feet away. That's often where the puck winds up seconds after the opponent wins the faceoff and clears the zone, meaning a two-minute Wild power play has suddenly become a 90-second power play -- or two minutes of chaos.

"We're not good enough on faceoffs. That simple," Lemaire said, again.

The Wild has the third-worst faceoff winning percentage in the NHL, winning 47.5 percent. But that statistic doesn't indicate in what zone faceoffs are won or lost, or the time of game. The ramifications of a lost faceoff in the offensive zone in the first five minutes could be a lot less severe than a lost faceoff in the defensive zone in the final minute.

And the Wild seems to lose a lot of big draws, which lead to unnecessary scrambles and wasted energy.

"We do need to improve, and personally, I take a lot of pride in it and I know all our centermen do," said Wes Walz, who is third on the Wild with a .485 faceoff winning percentage.

But before we jump solely down the throats of centers Todd White (.495), Mikko Koivu (.494) and Walz, who have taken 2,139 of the Wild's 3,227 faceoffs (66 percent), the art of winning the draw is up to all five players on the ice, in particular the wingers.

The centers just take the brunt of the criticism, or the praise, because faceoff wins and losses register on their personal statistics.

"You win draws by getting the puck behind the centermen a foot, six inches," said General Manager Doug Risebrough, a terrific faceoff guy during his 13-year career. "Then, it's up to the other guys to win the draw.

"I used to say to guys, 'It's coming here, you better get it.' And if I didn't put it there, it was my fault. But if it was there and they didn't get it, it was their fault."

It's got to be a team philosophy, Risebrough said, not much different from battling for the puck along the wall, another area of inconsistency for the Wild.

Teams willing to dig in high-traffic areas usually are successful in the faceoff circle, as well. Edmonton, Atlanta and Carolina are three of the top five teams in faceoff success and, not coincidentally, are three of the NHL's top forechecking teams.

Last week, Carolina Hurricanes captain Rod Brind'Amour, who is second behind Phoenix's Yanic Perreault with a .595 faceoff winning percentage, won 17 of 31 faceoffs against the Wild. Brind'Amour, who leads the NHL with 1,468 faceoffs taken, has won 883, or 53 more than Koivu has even taken.

"I watched Brind'Amour against us," Walz said. "I watched [5-10] Ray Whitney go into the faceoff circle and push about seven pucks back to their defensemen. You need help from everybody. The puck's laying around. We need some hunger."

Risebrough won't let the Wild centers escape all blame, however, saying they make the mistake of trying to win every draw too cleanly.

"It's like an arm-wrestling contest," Risebrough said. "You try to win the first second, you're not going to win."

Risebrough also questions the sticks Walz, Koivu and White use late in games. He feels they should change their sticks during big faceoff situations to "a thicker, stronger, heavier" stick.

"You're not trying to score a goal there," Risebrough said. "You're trying to muscle a puck. It's a power thing. I spent a lot of time thinking about faceoffs to the point where I did change my stick late in a game. I had a certain shaving of my stick because I didn't want my hands to twist in my stick.

"Wes' stick [with a thin blade], I don't know how you can win a faceoff with a stick like that."

At last month's All-Star Game, Perreault, who has won 62.1 percent of his draws and is on the verge of leading the NHL for a sixth consecutive season, said he works on faceoffs every day in practice. Islanders center Mike Sillinger, who has won 58 percent of his career faceoffs, and Phoenix's Kevyn Adams, who has won 54 percent of his career faceoffs, say they study opposing centers' tendencies.

"I don't know if our guys do that," Risebrough said. "You can say, well, that's up to the coaches, but I think it's up to our centermen. That's their job."

With the Feb. 27 trade deadline approaching, he said he's not actively looking for a faceoff specialist.

"I'd like us to be better, but I think there are only five or six guys in the league that we can say, 'That's what they do and that's what they do well,' " Risebrough said. "I think everybody can improve on it, and I think our team has to improve on it."

Michael Russo • mrusso@startribune.com