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

Now in its fifth 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.

Happy New Year, Crunch fans! In this episode, recorded January 8th, 2023, Alex welcomes Raw Charge contributor Lee Wright the podcast. Lee covers the Crunch for Raw Charge, a site that covers the Tampa Bay Lightning organization for SB Nation, and has been writing about the team since the beginning of the year. Lee and Alex settle in for a lively conversation about the team’s most recent performance, one that has differed a bit from what Syracuse was showing prior to the holiday break. Lee expresses the opinion that the team is “out of their groove,” and the two speculate together as to what is going on. They discuss the current injuries on the team, including those affecting Trevor Carrick, Hugo Alnefelt, and Felix Robert. They debate how a phenomenon entitled the “NHL Flu” might be affecting players in different ways, specifically Alex Barre-Boulet and Philippe Myers, and ponder how the mental side of hockey might be playing a part in their game – and the fans’ perceptions – of those players. Other players discussed include Darren Raddysh, Cal Foote, Tyson Fiest, Shawn Element, and Gabriel Dumont.

The two then move into an in-depth discussion about a specific game, Syracuse’s January 7th tilt against Rochester. Specifically, they zero in on a scrum that happened at the end of the game that heavily involved Jack LaFontaine, the team’s current backup goalie on recall from the ECHL, and Gemel Smith. They discuss the pros and cons of LaFontaine’s involvement in the scrum, something that is potentially complicated by a possible injury to team starter Max Lagace, and ponder what the league may do in response to the activities of the evening. They then take a look at the team’s upcoming schedule together, and examine the playoff-like nature of the Crunch’s schedule for the rest of January. 

Of note is that this episode was recorded prior to the team’s game at Hershey on Sunday.

Syracuse Speaks is hosted on Anchor, but is distributed to many of the major podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Audible, 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!

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