Tips for Centers

Centers

Recommended player style:

1) Playmaker (great passer, dominates face-offs, can shoot well with stat boosts)

2) Dangler (good passer, most athletic player-type in the game, can play center effectively if all defensive points go into the face-off stat, poor shooter even with stat boosts)

As a service to everyone else on your team, please do not play center if you cannot win at least 50 percent of your face-offs. Reason being, it is no coincidence that teams who lose the face-off battle often lose the game, too. As for how to win face-offs, remember that it is just as much a battle of player ratings as it is a battle of player skill.

When thinking about the ratings, realize that playmakers are at a serious advantage in the face-off circle, because they start with a default face-off rating of 80, not 75, like all the other forwards.

Regardless of how good your initial face-off rating is, you will still want to spend the majority of your attribute points in the face-off category, because winning the battle in the face-off circle is the most important aspect of playing the center position well.

As for how to win the face-off with your skills, it is really something that must be "felt out," due to the varying latency of each game. But in general, you want to start your poke -- which defaults to "down" on the right joystick for both consoles -- a half-second before the referee sticks his arm out to drop the puck.

In other words, anticipate the ref’s drop, and try to start your poke just before he begins his drop animation.

Also keep an eye on your opponent’s stick before the drop, and remember that you can "play it safe" by waiting and reacting to the ref’s drop, (instead of trying to anticipate the drop) if you see that your opponent is way out in front and left out of position after his initial swipe.

Yes, the center -- or centre, if you’re one of those funny-talking people who always seems to play as Montreal -- is where you should be spending most of your time on the ice.

On offense, when attempting to break into the offensive zone, centers should be looking for open space in the middle of the ice where they can sit, receive a pass, advance the puck up the ice as far as possible, and -- once their Spider Sense starts tingling -- make a quick dish out to a winger filling the outside lane.

Upon entering the zone, centers should continue looking for open space in the middle of the defense where they can collect a centering pass for a quick wrist shot out of the slot.

To make themselves even more effective when patrolling the interior of the ice, centers will want to hold down the "vision control" button whenever they are moving without the puck –- this defaults to the left trigger, for Xbox 360 users.

What "vision control" does, is keep your player’s shoulders square to the puck at all times. The effect this has, is that it keeps your player in good position to pass or shoot the second the puck touches his stick by eliminating the time-consuming twists and turnarounds that your player often has to go through to get a pass/shot off when he’s not locked on to the puck.