Ice Hockey

Syracuse struggles with penalties in early season winless streak

Kali Bowden | Staff Photographer

Syracuse and its opponents have spent more than half of their games with players off the ice because of penalties. It's cost the Orange.

In 245 minutes of hockey this season, Syracuse and its opponents have racked up 128 minutes of penalties — making up more than half of the total ice time. Seventy of those minutes were charged to the Orange, equating to more than 37 minutes playing a player down.

“It’s kind of the nit picky,” Syracuse head coach Paul Flanagan. “Maybe you had your stick there and the girl fell down.”

Emily Costales and Dakota Derrer each have four penalties for eight minutes total while five other players have two or three penalties, respectively.

Syracuse (0-3-1) will have to limit penalties while not sacrificing physical play this weekend in a home-and-home series with No. 5 Colgate (4-0). The Orange hopes to stifle its penalties by keeping its feet moving, using good positioning and what Flanagan calls “stick management.”

“If you come up and clip someone, just nick them, it’s a high stick,” Flanagan said. “Manage the stick, stay away from the trips, the hooks and the high sticks so we’ll work on that.”



It has not necessarily been overly physical play or rough play causing the excess penalties for the Orange, but more close calls, according to Flanagan.

Eighteen of its 31 penalties this season have been stick related — either tripping, hooking or high-sticking. Stick management involves keeping the stick below the waist and away from danger areas like opponents hands and ankles.

Though SU has done well on the penalty kill — allowing two goals on 28 attempts for a dauntingly efficient 7.1 percent opponent conversion rate — playing with less than five players for almost a third of every game disrupts offensive flow.

Flanagan still wants his team to be physical through the penalties, however.

“Take the puck, then the body,” several players mentioned along with being smart along the boards when battling for a loose puck.

“(Flanagan’s) not really concerned with the physicality as long as we’re going for the right thing,” Costales said. “We’re purposely trying to take the puck away, not purposely trying to hit the player. So he just pretty much preaches body and puck.”

Players were in consensus that most of SU’s penalties have come when players were being lazy and not moving their feet, causing players to be out of position.

According to Flanagan, positioning is key and when players get caught, often behind a player, is when the stick comes up on the hands of an opponent and a penalty is called. Players echoed his comments, constantly bring up positioning as a big key to eliminating the nitpicky calls.

“We’ve got to keep winning our battles,” Derrer said, “just have to keep moving our feet so we stay away from those penalties like tripping and hooking. … He just wants us to be all over them so they have no time and space.”

In Syracuse’s first game of the season, fans yelled “swallow your whistle, a**hole,” and other angry phrases at the referees. But the Orange didn’t blame the calls on the officials.

The players said the onus is on them to police themselves.

“I feel like a lot of the reffing was kind of off too, not to blame it all on there. We’re mostly been working on a lot of physical stuff,” Costales said. “We just want to keep being physical, keep playing the puck, keep playing the body because that’s the way we play the game so we don’t want to let down from that.”





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