The Best Faceoff Teams and Players in NHL 17! Online Versus

At one point or another, faceoffs have lost you a game. You may not have realized it, but at least once a goal was scored on you directly due to a faceoff loss and many others that could be traced back to a recent faceoff loss and therefore be partially to blame.

You may have already read my How to Win Faceoffs in NHL 17 post, if you did then you know one of the major factors in winning or losing a faceoff is the faceoff attribute of the player you are using, which isn’t exactly human controlled. That is what this post focuses on.

I want to ensure that the next time you play your buddy you have a clear advantage and they don’t even know it 😉

While we can’t change the player attributes(in online play), we can choose our Centermen.

*The following stats are based on the official online rosters, which are required for playing Online Versus.

Determining The Best Faceoff Team

To determine the best faceoff team I used the median faceoff rating of all four default centerman and also included the average overall rating of those players as well.

If you already know what median means and don’t care why I chose the team’s faceoff median over average then jump ahead to the best faceoff teams section by clicking: JUMP AHEAD

Quick math lesson(things I never thought I’d say) for those who have forgot the difference between median and average or maybe never knew it – don’t worry, no shaming here… unless you think Football is more exciting to watch than Hockey… then GTFO! Which Football? Doesn’t matter.

Anyways, Median can be thought of as the middle value in a set of numbers – wiki

ie. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 – the median is 3.

ie. 1, 10, 11, 15 – the median is 10.5

In some cases the average and the median can be the same like in the first example; however, the median is less affected by drastically low or high numbers – which is why I’m using it instead of the average.

When it comes to the ideal faceoff team in NHL 17, being realistic, you would want at least 1 really good faceoff man(87+) to use in super critical situations, 2 above average faceoff men(80-ish), and then who cares about the 4th one… If you are using your 4th line in any sort of critical situation then you’re doing it wrong.

Real Team Example: Dallas Stars have Tyler Seguin, Jason Spezza, and Cody Eakin as their top 3 centermen – all with 82 faceoff rating. Then on the 4th line they have Brett Ritchie way down at 65 faceoff rating.

This makes their median faceoff rating a very respectable 82, whereas their average is 77.75, well we don’t care about Ritchie since he won’t be taking many faceoffs anyway so the median is a better representation of what we’re after in a “good faceoff team”.

As for including the average overall rating, you of course want the players themselves to be decent too, even the 4th liner. If there is a tie in faceoff skill then you might as well go with the team that has the more overall skilled centermen or maybe sacrifice some skill in the dot for more overall skill? Up to you.

Best Faceoff Team

Without further ado… The best faceoff team in NHL 17 is the Anaheim Ducks. With a faceoff median of 84.5 thanks to Getzlaf(89), Kesler(85), and Vermette(84). The average overall rating of these players is a more than respectable 86 as well, 3rd best out of all NHL teams.

***As of the October 19th roster update, Carolina has taken over the crown! At a whopping 87 faceoff median. Average overall is lower than Anaheim’s though at 83.33. Both tables below have been updated.

*Disclaimer: This is with the default online rosters. HUT card ratings can be different in comparison.

For those interested, I created a table so you can sort through all teams faceoff medians and average overall centerman ratings.

Editing Lines

The above table is assuming that you don’t edit your lines pre-game, which in my experience playing online versus – most don’t. Whether you have or not, You have likely at least seen this option before readying up for an online versus match:

This can really change things as the default roster lines don’t always have the best possible faceoff men playing center.

How to Edit Lines: First off, changing lines before an online versus match is the exact same as before an offline “Play Now” Match. I suggest you mess around there first to figure out what you want before going into an online versus so you don’t make me wait forever are more prepared.

In-case you aren’t familiar with editing lines, I made a quick video changing Detroit’s lines for optimal faceoff skill, the video starts off with what you see after going into “edit lines” from the screenshot above:

By default, Detroit has an average faceoff median of 77.5. After I unscratched a couple players and swapped Sheahan with Helm; we got it up to 86, even better than Anaheim!I’m going to be real pissed if I start playing against faceoff god teams all the time now because of this post… that is the sacrifice I made for you guys.

Of course, faceoff attribute isn’t the only thing that matters for a centerman so keep that in mind when doing your swaps. It might not always be worth the boost in faceoff skill.

Best Faceoff Players

Now knowing that we can optimize lines for best faceoff combos, let’s have a look at the top faceoff players for each team. If the team’s best faceoff players were already the default centerman then I didn’t include any other players from that team. If there was room for improvement, I included the top 1-3 players that weren’t already centerman.

There is a column for what line they are on and if they aren’t the center of that line already then I included their position or “SCRATCHED” if they aren’t on a line at all.

*Hidden Gem: Arizona holds Datsyuk’s final year of his contract so he’s considered a “scratched” player for them even though he’s not playing in the NHL anymore. So yeah, Datsyuk centering Domi and Duclair?… uh yes please!

Keeping This Updated

A lot of you might be thinking what happens when there is a roster update? Will the tables be useless? I plan to keep the tables up to date. If a team dethrones Anaheim as the best faceoff team then I will definitely update that as well.

Below each graph you may have noticed the “Online Roster” and “Last Updated” footer. Online Roster refers to the release date of the active in-game roster set that is being used in the table. You can find which ones you are using in-game by going to the home screen then Customize > Active Roster.

“Last updated” is of course the last time I updated the table – I will update both of those dates as I go.

Hope this is helpful and let me know if you notice any mistakes.

Share your best faceoff combos in the comments. Unless you want to keep your faceoff strategy secret I suppose 😀 understandable.