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

Now in its fourth 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.

This episode, the first of season four, is a little different than Alex’s usual format. It comes to you in two parts: The first, recorded August 11th, 20201, features a chat with Matthew Esteves of Raw Charge. Matt and Alex discuss the Tampa Bay Lightning’s recent string of success and how Syracuse has contributed to that success.  They discuss the importance of the coherence between Tampa and Syracuse and how important the last decade has been for development within the organization. They examine the achievements of homegrown organizational players like Ross Colton, Mathieu Joseph, and Andrei Vasilevskiy. They commiserate about the loss of Yanni Gourde to Seattle and reminisce a little about Gourde’s path in the Lightning organization. Matt also makes some predictions about the future of the Lightning and which Crunch players are poised to be the next homegrown success story (Hint: It involves a couple of forwards recently labeled the Talented Trio). 

The second part of the podcast is a recording of the most recent episode of Locked On Lightning with host Adam Denker. Adam had Alex on his podcast on Friday, August 6th, and was nice enough to provide Syracuse Speaks with a copy of their discussion. Adam and Alex discuss Syracuse and Tampa, including a deeper look at Joseph and his specific path in the organization. They do the same with Colton, chewing over how the forward elevated his game throughout his developmental path. They breakdown the importance of strong AHL depth and how essential it is for long NHL playoff runs to have a well-stocked cupboard of players ready to jump in and contribute. Of note is that Adam also covers the Orlando Solar Bears here at Field Pass Hockey, so make sure to give him a follow!

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!

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!