I can't seem to repro that, SyntaxError seems to happen before the code runs the first time. (2.7 Ubuntu)

SyntaxError can happen as a consequence of loading a module (hitting an import statement, etc). But for a simpler example, replace SyntaxError with NameError and it's still almost always a design error that you probably have no sane way to handle in an exception handler (other than to mask the problem).

Python's a very dynamic language and so of course you could come up with examples to the contrary (ones where the user input could trigger SyntaxError or NameError).

But the only universally good reason I know of where you should be wrapping imports in try except is 2/3 compatibility or other module/library import fallback. For these you need to be catching syntaxerror and other system errors.