New Faceoff Counters in NHL 19! Get the Advantage

There are two major changes to Faceoffs in NHL 19. They may seem minor at first glance, but the impact on faceoff strategy is significant.

• Removed the backhand forehand faceoff switch
• Two counter changes
• Backhand stick lift now beats the tie-up
• Forehand stick lift now beats the Backhand stick lift

Let’s dig into what this means exactly.

No Backhand Forehand Switch

Even if you’ve never heard of the backhand forehand faceoff switch, you have likely seen it happen to you if you played NHL 18 online:

The backhand forehand switch was the main thing that added some strategy and variety into faceoffs last year. It created somewhat of a skill gap.

Why? Because before the backhand forehand switch, if someone lined up on their backhand then the opposing player, if they knew what they were doing, would tie-up and win every faceoff. There was no way to counter a tie-up while lined up on your backhand.

Queue the backhand forehand switch. You could use the backhand grip as bait to trick your opponent then switch to the basic forehand move at the last second, which beats the tie-up that they were probably planning to do when they saw you lined up on your backhand.

With that technique gone, EA had to do something to keep faceoff strategy in the game. That brings us to our next section, new counters!

NHL 19 Faceoff Counters

The new counters:

• Backhand stick lift now beats the tie-up
• Forehand stick lift now beats the Backhand stick lift

Massive shoutout to @Brianstormed for making the Faceoff counter grid below.

How to use the grid:

Say you want to find out what beats “Basic Forehand,” find Basic Forehand in either the first or last columns and then follow that row until you see a square that isn’t the basic forehand designated colour(light red). After doing that you will find there are two, dark red and dark blue, which are both the stick lift faceoff types. If you expect your opponent to do either stick lift, then do NOT attempt a basic forehand draw.

Faceoff Situation Example

Let’s go over a common faceoff situation from NHL 18 to see how it would go in NHL 19.

You may recall this faceoff goal from 18; it was one of the most common:

There was a couple of variations, like this one:

In general, it always started with a tie-up. I mentioned above how you could use the backhand forehand switch to bait players into trying to tie you up since they would be licking their lips thinking they are about to snipe you with the above strategy. You can’t do that now of course, but you can still use a very similar approach.

In NHL 19, we now know the backhand stick lift beats tie-up. So you will still lineup on your backhand just like if you were going to do the backhand forehand switch, but instead of switching you do a backhand stick lift 🙂 majority of players won’t know about this new counter, so they will still think they will be able to tie you up.

Of course, this will only work until everyone figures out the new counters, but I reckon that 95% of players didn’t know what the faceoff counters were in the first place. So I’m sure it will take everyone a while to figure out what has changed. In the meantime, take full advantage!

If you want more information on faceoff formations and how to do each draw type then check out my how to win faceoffs guide. the formations and controls have not changed at all for 19.

Watch the Video

Rather watch a video? Check out @Brianstormed’s below and I highly recommend giving his YouTube channel a sub! Great player and great content.