Actually, nothing in the faceoff system changed this year aside from the "deke forward" move becoming less effective.
Everything else from the NHL 11 faceoff guide still applies to NHL 12:
http://www.operationsports.com/strat...faceoff-guide/
If you're just playing the CPU, though, you may notice that the default AI faceoff difficulty is much harder than it was in NHL 11. You can change that with sliders if you find yourself losing too many.