New York Islanders Five Best At the Faceoff Dot

With a few costly faceoffs against the New York Islanders, I wanted to go over some of this franchise’s best faceoff men. How good were they really?

In the dying minutes of a 1-0 game against the Blackhawks recently, the New York Islanders lost a defensive zone faceoff. The Blackhawks of course scored and the Islanders missed out on a valuable point.

It’s unfortunate that a full 60 minutes comes down to a puck drop and a 50/50 battle. Look at the stats. Players generally float around the 50% faceoff win margin.

Only the excellent draw takers ever get close to 60%. Unless you’re Yanic Perrault, then you’re a faceoff diety. Hitting 61.75% on average in his career, and a season high of 65.16% in 2003-04.

List Constraints

First thing’s first. The NHL didn’t start recording faceoff win percentages until the 1997-98 season so some of these names probably weren’t the ones you thought might make the list.

For this list I only picked centers. No need to include players who rarely take draws clogging up the top of this list. Lookin’ at you Ziggy Palffy and your 100% success rate on the draw.

I then further limited the list to exclude anyone who’s played less than 100 games for the Islanders. No need to include Thomas Vanek’s 100% success rate even though he’s a left wing who rarely took draws, and wasn’t in town for more than 47 games.

This list is supposed to show how Islanders players who took draws frequently, and who wore the Blue and Orange for more than a season faired.

To the list!