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.

In this episode, recorded September 24th, 2021, Alex welcomes Patrick Williams back to the show. With a little under a month left before the AHL season gets underway, the two of them discuss everything from COVID-19 pandemic fatigue to the question of Syracuse’s captain. Specifically, Patrick and Alex cover the following topics:

• How the league itself has changed over the past 19 months
• The creativity teams are going to have to show as they try to get fans – especially families, their bread-and-butter – back into their arenas
• Questions of vaccination mandates around the league for fans, front offices, and players
• The turnover many AHL front offices have faced (including Syracuse), and how the loss of that collective knowledge could affect everything from ticket sales to game day experiences
• The increased importance of pre-season this October, both in terms of roster formation and front office preparation
• Has the Tampa Bay Lightning potentially given Syracuse one of their most competitive and impressive rosters yet?
• Patrick’s best guess for the Crunch’s captaincy: Daniel Walcott or Gabriel Dumont? (Not to get too click-batey, but the answer might surprise you!)

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!