All those efforts accumulated with a 71 percent showing against Trevor Baptiste -- widely regarded as the best faceoff specialist in the game -- on Thursday night in the second Whipsnakes win.

“A lot of what goes into taking him on is wing play,” said Nardella. “I think we have the best wings (Michael Ehrhardt, Tyler Warner) in the league. If you look at our clamp stats, we’re pretty even, but what happens after the faceoff is what it takes to beat him.”

Nardella’s clamp rate for 2020 is 54.5 percent, but what’s more impressive is how many draws he can win even when he doesn’t earn the clamp right off the bat; he’s won 72 percent of faceoffs where he doesn’t earn the clamp.

When he does get the clamp though, Nardella is just about unstoppable; his 93.3 percent of faceoff wins after he’s won the clamp is one of the more jarring stats in the entire league.

“You can’t even think about it,” he said. “It’s one faceoff at a time, like the first couple of games. That’s really what has brought us success since last season, there’s no need to deviate from that.”

Perhaps that’s where his biggest adjustment has been as well; Nardella’s 38.5 percent on the clamp was the worst in the league, and he still managed to be a faceoff specialist of the year finalist.

What we’re seeing now though is a different player.

“People underestimate how hard it is to put your body through that,” said Nardella. “If I do my job on the field and focus on helping the team, good things are going to happen.”