Welcome to Syracuse Speaks, a podcast for Field Pass Hockey!

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.

A bit of a disclaimer: Monday, July 5th was when this episode was recorded. It was also the date of the fourth game of the Stanley Cup Final, a series that the Tampa Bay Lightning was leading 3-0 at the time of recording. Obviously Alex would have preferred to wait until after the game before publishing this episode, but unfortunately, that wasn’t possible. Please just know that the result of that game was unknown at the time.

In this episode, Alex takes a look at how the American Hockey League and the Syracuse Crunch have shaped the Lightning. There’s a reason 24 players currently on the Lightning’s roster have at least some AHL experience in their pasts. The league offers players a bridge between juniors/college and professional hockey, unique challenges that create growth as both a player and a professional, and, when needed, the opportunity to get a career back on track. All 24 players Alex looks at experienced the AHL through at least one of those situations. 

She starts off by discussing the few players who had AHL time under their belts before this season but were not with Syracuse, including Blake Coleman and Curtis McElhinney. She also discusses the curious case of forward Patrick Maroon. She then discusses players who played for Syracuse for a small amount of time since the start of the affiliation in 2012, including superstars Andrei Vasilevskiy and Nikita Kucherov.  Next, she spends some time looking at the players currently on the Lightning’s roster who had an impact on Syracuse’s own bids for championships, like Tyler Johnson, Mitchell Stephens, Ben Thomas, Yanni Gourde, and Daniel Walcott. She finishes off with the newer crop of players who are making an impact (or appear poised to in the near future): Erik Cernak, Ross Colton, Cal Foote, Alex Barre-Boulet, and more.

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 Field Pass Hockey on Facebook and Twitter for all the latest AHL, ECHL, and SPHL minor league hockey news and analysis!