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Army had scored on three of its last five shots as Bobby Gavin left his crease. Grant Murphy sprinted to the end line to keep a loose ball in bounds and swept it to Saam Olexo. With Gavin calling for the ball, Olexo blindly heaved it to his goalie, who was out of the crease as he tried to help Syracuse clear.

Gavin was pressured by two Army attacks and attempted to dodge them and give the ball to Murphy. But the pass hit Army sharpshooter Brendan Nichtern’s facemask and bounced twice before Nichtern beat Gavin to the loose ball and scored on the open net.

Following the Black Knights’ fifth goal in the first period, Gavin was pulled from the game.

“We thought Bobby wasn’t seeing the ball like he was in the past games in the early quarter,” head coach Gary Gait said. “Why not mix it up when you have another very good goalie ready to go?”

That other option was Harrison Thompson, who played the rest of the Orange’s four-goal loss to the Black Knights. Gait said postgame he would continue to rotate the two goalies moving forward.

Since then, Syracuse (3-4, 0-1 Atlantic Coast) hasn’t fielded a consistent starter in the cage. Gavin started the Orange’s first four games, but after being pulled early against Army, Thompson started two straight games before Gavin played the entire contest versus Stony Brook. SU’s inconsistencies in net have led to it allowing 13 goals per game, the 16th-most in the country.

“They’re pretty evenly matched. We’ve kind of just been going week by week and making the tough decision on who’s going to start,” Gait said. “But they’re both on board, they’re both working hard, and they’re both ready to go when we need them.”

Gavin played the first half of the season-opening win over Holy Cross but then played the entirety of the Orange’s losses to Maryland and Virginia, the then-top two teams in the country. He stopped 11 and 12 shots in both games, respectively but also allowed 14 goals to the Terrapins and 20 to the Cavaliers. Then against Army, he was pulled after conceding five goals, after his first-quarter save percentage finished below 30%.

Gavin struggled to stop low, bouncing shots from Army. Thompson came in and had the same struggle while recording nine saves in three periods.

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With Syracuse up 8-6 — a lead built on a 6-0 first-half run — Nichtern held the ball behind the net on another long possession in SU’s zone. After a pick set by Army’s Paul Johnson on Dami Oladunmoye, Nichtern found an opening, passing to Danny Kielbasa near the crease. Kielbasa surprised Thompson with a bouncing shot, finding the back of the net as the sophomore goalie held his stick too high.

Thompson earned his first career start the following week against Hobart. Syracuse was in control throughout the early stages of the game, but a 3-0 run by the Statesmen clawed them back into what turned out to be a back-and-forth game.

All three of those goals came from close range, just like Kielbasa’s goal against Thompson. The first two came on open feeds where Hobart’s goal scorer had plenty of space to fire a shot past Thompson. On the third score, which tied the game at 6-6, Thompson and SU were a man down and Ryan Archer was wide-open 10 yards away from goal. Murphy slid over late, and Archer had time to set up a side arm shot that went between Thompson’s legs as he held his stick high to block the top corner.

Gavin played the final 20 minutes, holding off Hobart enough for a two-goal Syracuse win as he made three saves. Still, it was Thompson who earned the start against then-No. 19 Johns Hopkins.

Thompson, who played the full game for the first and only time this season, made seven saves, fewer than he made in his limited action against Army and Hobart. All seven came in the first and fourth quarters as Thompson didn’t make a save between the final buzzer of the opening period and 2:24 into the final frame. While Thompson improved on saving close range and low shots, he continued to make mistakes that left Syracuse vulnerable.

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With Johns Hopkins’ scoring leader, Joey Epstein, stopped behind the net with the ball, Thompson retreated to the cage to try and block his passing lane. But Epstein’s pass went to the opposite side of the goal and found an onrushing Johnathan Peshko, who slotted home the open-net shot to give Johns Hopkins its first multi-goal lead of the game.

Gavin got the start six days later, finishing with a season-high 13 saves against unranked Stony Brook. Tied 5-5 at the half, the Seawolves had taken one more shot on goal than Syracuse, forcing six second-period saves out of Gavin.

But as SU’s offense took over, Gavin saw less action in the second half. An 8-0 run helped the Orange dominate possession and hold Stony Brook to just nine second-half shots on goal. Gavin stopped five of them.

“We got Bobby to start last game to get him back and make sure we didn’t lose him and kept him focused,” Gait said. “And he did a great job.”

Published on March 23, 2022 at 10:27 pm

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