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 May 29th, 2022, Alex looks towards the 2022-23 Syracuse Crunch season. But first, she acknowledges the philosophical struggle around creating podcast episodes about hockey and sports as the nation she lives in experiences painful events. She takes a moment to acknowledge the past few weeks of violence in the United States, but also explains that she feels discussing what people are passionate about is also important. She emphasizes the positive mental health strategy of taking breaks from the coverage of everything and expresses the hope that this podcast episode will help people do that. 

Alex starts out her conversation around this summer right at the top with Crunch head coach Ben Groulx. Groulx, who has been with Syracuse since 2016, has made no secret of his desire to coach in the NHL. Speculation in that area has been heating up lately, so Alex takes a look at the current coaching vacancies in that league and discusses her best guest for where Groulx might end up if it goes that way.

She also takes a very brief look at some coaches who have recently been let go by other AHL teams who could step into Groulx’s rather large shoes if he is hired elsewhere.

Alex then goes on to look briefly at the Tampa Bay Lightning’s roster situation before looking at Syracuse’s, starting with the team’s rather talented crop of unrestricted free agents. Not surprisingly, Alex’s largest concern is UFA Gabriel Dumont, who captained Syracuse all season, but she also discusses forward Anthony Richard and defenseman Fredrik Claesson. Alex then addresses the goaltending, including veteran Max Lagace potentially moving on, and ponders what the Lightning might do (which is potentially different from what she hopes they do).

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!