Edited Oct. 1, 2020 at 7:50 a.m.
Quoting: Richard88
That's interesting about Boyd having a good P/60. It would be a risk for a team like Colorado to bring in an unproven 3C though. Sakic is pretty high on analytics though, not least with Burakovsky, so he might be willing to bet on a guy who has stats suggesting that he could produce 35+ points in a bigger role. That said, Boyd's career faceoff % of 39.5% is a big yikes.
Yeah. I don't think Boyd has played much center in the NHL. He played center up through the AHL, and then won the Cup playing a little bit of 4L. Mostly 4R this year. He's got, like, 350 career faceoff attempts, so... meh. Needs practice on that. But for teams that like to match handedness to a situation or to try to beat a particular guy on faceoffs, right shot centers can be valuable. I don't think that's a thing the Caps worried about, the last couple years, leaving Kuznetsov on the dot with similar numbers.
eta: what I'm saying is on teams where guys just take their strong side draws, the same guys who are bad at faceoffs become average, and guys who are average become good. Does that get Travis Boyd to 55%? No. But if it gets him to 48%, and you put him in on his strong side for a a left shot linemate who's 51% overall, but only 45% on the right circle? The team wins more draws and the numbers show in the other guy.
2nd edit: Compher was 4th on the 'Lanche last year in faceoff attempts, and won 51% at evens. Boyd can play RW, and be the guy who covers back on defense. Forget all that other stuff. But if you want to really drill down, Compher is over 50% on offensive zone draws. A couple years ago Boyd was over 50 on defensive zone draws, but the sample size was, like, three.