Thursday, July 16, 2015

The Greg Gurenlian MVP Case

Brendan Fowler (Hounds) faced-off at about 61% during his time at Duke. In 2 games
vs. Gurenlian this year he is 19/63 (30.16%). Who says it's a young mans game?
The MLL regular season is wrapping up, the playoff picture is is coming into focus, and the MVP chatter is getting hot. Some of the obvious names in the mix are once again Rabil, McArdle, Pannell, Wolf, Abbott, Schreiber - all guys who are consistently getting it done on the offensive end in what what is an offensive league. In the 14 year history of the MLL MVP award, just once has a non-offensive player won the award (2002 in goalie, Greg Cattrano). The other 13 years it’s been attackmen and middies bringing home the hardware. But could that be different this year with the numbers that Lizards FOGO, Greg Gurenlian, is producing? The 31 year-old is having a historic year at the face-off x winning roughly 78% (77.68% exactly) of his draws, to date. The closest player behind him (min. 100 draws) is Mike Poppleton of Rochester who’s won 58%.

If that’s not staggering to you then this will be: in the league’s 14 year history, the highest face-off win % (min. 100 face-offs) in a regular season is just 64% (set by Greg Gurenlian, circa 2013). I’ll say it again, he’s winning roughly 78% this year.

Perhaps he’s overshadowed by a star-studded team that includes the likes of Drew Adams, Joe Fletcher, Ned Crotty, Paul Rabil, Rob Pannell, and a terrific supporting cast. Or maybe it’s that his position is, and has never been, the most glorified.

Gurenlian is re-writing the history books, literally. I will reiterate that MLL is an offensive league filled with explosive offensive players and until the league expands and evolves it will stay that way. What’s vital to winning in an offensive league is scoring goals. The Lizards currently lead all of Major League Lacrosse in total goals scored with 183. That’s 18 more goals or about 11% more goals than the 2nd highest scoring (goals) team in the league, the Ohio Machine who’ve scored 165 goals. While it helps that the Lizards are shooting at a high rate and have those offensive weapons, the offense wouldn’t have the ball if they weren’t winning faceoffs at such a high rate (the Lizards have 20 more possessions, via face-offs, per 100 face-offs than the next best FO team in the MLL). If anything, let this post just serve as an appreciation for a remarkable feat by the man they call “The Beast”.


Some visuals for you...
You can see that (other than Charlotte) there is a correlation between a teams face-off win % and their total goals scored.

Greg Gurenlian is no rookie to the MLL record books. Here's a look at the all-time top face-off percentages in a single season entering 2015.

*all statistics and rankings are of 7/16, 7pm

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