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 desires to share her passion for the team and the league with her listeners.

In this episode, recorded April 27th and 28th, 2021, Alex ends up having to preempt her own episode when news breaks right before she had the chance to put the episode together. In a flurry a moves, the Florida Panthers rather dramatically changed the look of Syracuse’s roster by recalling defenseman Brady Keeper and goaltender Sam Montembeault to their taxi squad. In a corresponding move, Florida also sent goalie Ryan Bednard from ECHL Greenville to Syracuse. With Spencer Martin still with the Crunch, Alex isn’t really worried, but there’s no doubt the sudden recall right before gametime came as a bit of a surprise. 

Getting back into the flow of things, Alex discusses the Crunch’s newest social event, a hybrid happening with both virtual and in-person elements scheduled for May 4th. She also mentions the recalls of Grigori Denisenko and Aleksi Heponiemi to Florida, and the call-up of forward Nikita Pavlychev to Syracuse, before celebrating the reigning AHL Players of the Week: Taylor Raddysh (for the period ending April 18, 2021) and Boris Katchouk (for the period ending April 25, 2021). The excitement around those players – and linemate Otto Somppi – is palpable amongst the fan base and the coaching staff, and she makes the case that their achievements during this rather unique season can’t be understated. 

During this segment, Alex also discusses Syracuse owner Howard Dolgon‘s most recent optimistic statement about next season:

We’ve got a dose of positivity with an optimistic message from owner @HowardDolgon who is looking ahead to next season. ? pic.twitter.com/2dPBZGq3Ik

— Syracuse Crunch (@SyracuseCrunch) April 27, 2021

In the final part of this week’s episode, Alex previews Syracuse’s April 28th game against Utica. She takes a look at the standings, glances back at their past few games, and then looks forward at the rest of Syracuse’s season (Hint: So. Many. Comets). She also weighs the Crunch’s scorers against the rest of the AHL in terms of points, and finds out something kind of surprising: Syracuse is really making the Eastern Conference proud.

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!

Follow Alex on Twitter for all the latest news and notes regarding the Syracuse Crunch! Don’t forget to also follow The Sin Bin on Facebook and Twitter for all the latest AHL, ECHL, and SPHL minor league hockey news and analysis!