As Syracuse slumped to its worst finish in recent memory a year ago, the Orange’s struggle to find a consistent option at the faceoff X served as a microcosm for the season. Whether it was a lack of talent, or a lack of experience, SU was never able to find someone to step up and win faceoffs.

Saturday’s scrimmages provided hope for the future.

“We’ve got a couple of new kids out there that are going to keep getting better with experience,” Syracuse head coach John Desko said.

In its first game, a 15-10 win over Hofstra, the Orange won 16-of-28 faceoffs (57 percent) with Chris Daddio winning 8-of-11. In the second game SU was even better, winning 16-of-25 (64 percent). Daddio again led the way, going 6-for-7, but Cal Paduda, who attempted 11 faceoffs in the opener, was nearly as good, winning 5-of-6.

In both games, it was Paduda, a freshman, that got the call for the first faceoff.

“I had some jitters for the first couple faceoffs, but after that it was really smooth,” he said. “Everyone relaxed down, I relaxed down.”

The Orange maintains a by-committee approach to faceoffs, so Paduda doesn’t take much stock in getting the call for the first faceoff.

Where the by-committee approach does help Paduda, though, is in getting advice from some of the more experienced players. Daddio, Elliott Burr and Brendan Conroy have all taken faceoffs for longer than Paduda has, so he gets the opportunity to pick up tips from his more knowledgeable teammates.

“Everytime after a faceoff I’ll go up and talk to them, be like, ‘OK, he did this, what should I do next time?’” Paduda said. “Or we’ll share each other hints, like what works on this guy, what works on that guy. So we’re a really good unit — a team within a team.”

SU was 11 and 20 percent better than its season average on faceoffs a year ago in the games against the Pride and Crusaders respectively. Daddio was the star of the day at X, losing just three of his 18 faceoff attempts on the day.

Daddio appears to be the most reliable option with just three weeks until the regular season opener, but with a core of underclassmen someone else could emerge from the team within the team and give Syracuse the faceoff jolt it so desperately needed a year ago.

“Time will tell,” Desko said. “The freshmen here got a chance to go against two different teams, a set of different faceoff guys from each group, so it was great experience.”

Published on January 26, 2013 at 6:48 pm

Contact David: dbwilson@syr.edu | @DBWilson2