Welcome to Syracuse Speaks, a podcast for The Sin Bin!

Now in its third season, Syracuse Speaks aims to cover the Syracuse Crunch, its organization, and the AHL from the stands. Host Alexandra Ackerman has been covering Syracuse on the internet since 2008, and aims to share her passion for the team and the league with her listeners.

In this episode, recorded Monday, February 22nd and Tuesday, February 23rd, Alex starts off with a little housekeeping. She covers the complications that are contributing to the team’s current 1-3-1 record: the recalls of Ross Colton, Alex Barre-Boulet, and Riley Stillman; the injuries to Daniel Walcott, Henry Bowlby, and Aleksi Heponiemi; the complications of joining the players from two NHL organizations (the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Florida Panthers). She then briefly discusses Syracuse’s game versus Rochester, originally scheduled for February 24th, that was rescheduled for March 1st because of an “abundance of caution due to COVID-19 protocols.” She stresses that there has been no positive test result, and talks about her lack of desire to speculate over what is going on.  

She then welcomes Crunch Chief Operating Officer Jim Sarosy to the podcast. Throughout the personal, in-depth conversation, Alex and Jim cover a wide variety of topics, including:

• What the joys and the struggles of the past 11 months have been like for an AHL front office
• The moment the league’s pause in March 2020 became real for Jim and those in the organization
• The full impact of the Lightning’s support and partnership throughout everything that has happened
• What the plans for the future might involve, including how the team is aiming to reach out to fans and sponsors
• How Jim really feels about getting an office pet for the Crunch’s staff and crew (hint: it’s good news!)

Although the past 11 months have been incredibly challenging for Jim and the Crunch, there’s much to celebrate as Jim made sure to emphasize: “I’m beaming with pride on what we were able to do with a smaller group to be able to have this return to play come true.”

Give it a listen today! 

Syracuse Speaks is hosted on Anchor, but is distributed to many of the major podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Breaker, Overcast, Pocket Casts, RadioPublic, Spotify, and Stitcher. The royalty-free music featured in this episode was by Purple Planet Music and Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.

Thanks for listening!