Even the best centers in the NHL only win 60 percent of their faceoffs. So why is so much attention given to the draw?

In the third period of Saturday’s game against Northern Michigan, the Michigan hockey team was shown why once again. Wildcats forward Kevin Gardner won the draw in the Michigan zone. The puck made its way back to junior Jamie Miliam, and he fired a slap shot past Montoya, who never saw it.

Losing faceoffs in the defensive zone can be dangerous, and, in January, the Wolverines gave up three goals off defensive-zone faceoffs.

“We really want to bear down come playoff time,” junior center Andrew Ebbett said. “That could be the end of your season. It’s happened before, and we’ve seen it a lot. So we just want to stress that right down the stretch and into the playoffs.”

Ebbett leads the Wolverines in faceoff percentage at 56.6 percent. He said that winning faceoffs is about stick placement and reading your opponent. Michigan coach Red Berenson, who played as a center in the NHL for 18 years, added that there was a lot more that goes into winning the draw.

“It’s a little bit of technique, it’s a little bit of tenacity, second effort, being ready, watching the referees hand, knowing what the other player is going to do, or having an idea about what he’s going to do, and then going against him,” Berenson said.

Michigan actually wins more than half its faceoffs as a team, and the Wolverines’ regular centers — Ebbett, David Moss, T.J. Hensick and Chad Kolarik — all win more than their opponents. Kolarik, a freshman, moved to center over Thanksgiving weekend after playing the first few months of the season at right wing. Berenson said that he wanted Kolarik to get some experience in Michigan’s system before moving to center. Kolarik, who is a small center at 5-foot-11 and 175 pounds, said that he needs to be more consistent with his faceoff attempts.

“It’s definitely a mentality,” Kolarik said. “When I feel like I’m really bearing down, then I’m definitely going to win it. But if I’m just going in there nonchalant, then there’s a better chance that I’m going to lose it.”

Last Wednesday in practice, Berenson took aside all of the forwards to discuss some of the intricacies of winning a faceoff. He talked to all of the forwards — not just the centers — because he thinks everyone on the ice has to be able to take the draw. Sometimes during penalty kills, there are no centers on the ice, and, even when centers are available, sometimes they get pulled from the circle for trying to get an unfair advantage.

“I find myself getting kicked out all the time because I try to cheat a lot,” Kolarik said. “If you’re not cheating then you’re not trying, right? I’m a smaller guy, so I need to get all the benefits I can get, so I try to cheat.

“I try to bring my legs more into the circle, and I try to bring my head more over the faceoff dot so that he can’t get in there and he can’t get his body in. So I have more leverage.”

Whatever the strategy, Michigan has worked hard in practice to improve on its faceoffs. The Wolverines would like to be able to convert and score more off of its own draws. But the real focus has been in the defensive zone. Because they don’t want their season to end sometime in March just because they lost a draw.