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 April 23rd, 2022, Alex begins by discussing the Crunch’s Calder Cup playoff picture and the clinching scenarios in play going into Sunday, April 24th. She discusses how special this season has become for the fans and enthuses about how much things have changed for Syracuse over the past few weeks. Alex covers the ever-shifting landscape of the AHL’s North Division, and takes a look at three schedules of the teams around Syracuse in the standings: Laval, Belleville, and Toronto, who ironically are going to be playing each several times during the final week of the season. Alex makes a bold prediction that Syracuse’s playoff seeding will come down to their last game of the season, a home contest against Laval. 

Alex then runs down some stats for the team. She covers the usual suspects like Gabriel Dumont, Alex Barre-Boulet, Charles Hudon, and Max Lagace, but also looks at how Syracuse’s players are doing against the rest of the league. She takes a look at how the special teams are going, a stat bolstered by recent power-play success: the Crunch had four power-play goals in two games over the weekend thanks to Dumont, Hudon, Riley Nash, and Anthony Richard. She ends with a look at how defensive prospect Nick Perbix is fitting in with the team and how he has contributed to the Crunch’s recent success.

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!

Note: Due to scheduling constraints, this episode was recorded before Syracuse punched their ticket to the Calder Cup playoffs on Sunday with Rochester’s loss to Cleveland. Syracuse is indeed heading back to the playoffs! 

We’ll see you in the 2022 #CalderCup Playoffs, @SyracuseCrunch. pic.twitter.com/4ioUXrUee1

— American Hockey League (@TheAHL) April 24, 2022

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!