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 June 8th, 2021, Alex begins to break down Syracuse’s potential roster for the 2021-22 season. With NHL Free Agency scheduled for July 28th, she looks at the big questions for the Crunch through the lens of the unrestricted free agents (UFAs) and restricted free agents (RFAS) of the Lightning organization. Of those questions, Alex figures the biggest are those concerning current captain and upcoming UFA Luke Witkowski, and RFA forwards Taylor Raddysh, Boris Katchouk, Alex Barre-Boulet, and Ross Colton. For Witkowski, the question is multi-faceted and concerns both his playing career, style, fit, and the potential captaincy vacancy that would open up with his departure. For the four forwards, the question is not whether they’ll be qualified – that’s pretty much guaranteed – but rather where they’ll slate into the organizational depth chart and what kind of holes those decisions could leave in Syracuse. Alex ponders all of this and more, along with other questions concerning the goalies and the upcoming expansion draft.

For her second segment, Alex brings back her Jersey Series. This time, she reaches for a very timely pick: Gabriel Dumont‘s jersey from the 2017 Calder Cup finals. The jersey was worn in game one of the Crunch’s series against Grand Rapids, played on June 2nd, 2017. She reminisces about how Dumont grabbed her attention – something she also discussed recently with team photographer Scott Thomas – and also how that entire Crunch team really encapsulated the best of what the AHL has to offer its fans.

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!