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As the second period buzzer sounded, Pierre-Cédric Labrie and Kevin Bahl dropped their gloves in the far corner, muscling each other down to the ice. 

It provoked the home crowd’s loudest roar of the night as the Syracuse Crunch trailed its conference rivals, the Utica Comets, 3-0.

It was the first of two fights in a quintessential hard-hitting American Hockey League game, generating much needed momentum for Syracuse early in the third period and leading to the first arena-wide “Let’s go Crunch” chant of the night.

The Crunch ultimately fell 4-1 in its fifth game within the past week, a stretch where three players had been called up to their parent club’s taxi squad. But the loss still showed the bigger picture of that affiliation with the Tampa Bay Lightning, showcasing the trust the Lightning have in their developmental strategies, which has helped win them two consecutive Stanley Cup trophies.

Friday’s loss was reminiscent of the hard-nosed hockey Crunch fans remember from their past affiliations with the Anaheim Ducks and the Columbus Blue Jackets. The Crunch were struggling, only making the playoffs six times between 2000-12.

“Sometimes I think of the Columbus affiliation and the Anaheim affiliation, and how much the fans really cherished the fighters from those years,” said season ticket holder Alex Ackerman. “They cherished the fighters because the hockey was not good.”

But the Crunch have since evolved into one of the AHL’s most consistent teams over its nine seasons since becoming affiliated with the Lightning. Thirty-one Crunch regulars were a part of the Lightning’s Stanley Cup runs in 2020 and 2021, with multiple other Crunch alumni on the coaching staff. It’s a partnership consisting of two identical hockey perspectives, with each team prioritizing patience in development, adequate resources and a strong community to furnish a near victorious decade, the Crunch’s chief operating officer Jim Sarosy said.

The partnership with Tampa Bay was the turning point for the Crunch both on and off the ice. They had just finished their brief two-year affiliation with the Ducks, missing the playoffs the first season and barely qualifying the next year on the last day of the season. But to Sarosy, the contrasting hockey and player development philosophies were what ended that relationship.

The Ducks were a very self-centric organization and brought that mentality right to Syracuse, Sarosy said. Crunch players had to wear Ducks gear off the ice, meaning the players weren’t as invested in the Crunch organization or Syracuse community. The Ducks viewed Syracuse as a “holding pen” for future players, Ackerman said.

“The problem with that attitude is that a minor league team is built on the players that are there, and if they don’t feel that connection to the fanbase and the connection to that city, they’re not going to forge those connections with the fans that create (the) environment,” Ackerman said.

Ackerman was at the 2012 New York State Fair the summer when the Lightning became the team’s fifth-ever NHL parent club.

But she was surprised when future Crunch captain Mike Angelidis made an appearance at the Fairgrounds — prior players hadn’t made public appearances like that, Ackerman said. Angelidis had yet to play a game for the Crunch after winning the Calder Cup trophy with the Norfolk Admirals. Ackerman introduced herself and got her photo taken with the face of the transformed Crunch team.

Five months later, Ackerman and Angelidis met again at the season ticket holder Christmas party. Angelidis immediately remembered her name. To Ackerman, it meant much more than being on a first-name basis with the Crunch’s captain. It showed her that in such a short span, the Crunch players had embraced their new city and parent organization.

“I was immediately impressed by the level of professionalism and just general conduct that was expected by the Lightning players,” Ackerman said. “That’s something that overall has continued pretty consistently throughout the entire affiliation.”

The Syracuse Crunch have made the playoffs five times since becoming affiliated with the Tampa Bay Lightning. Meghan Hendricks | Photo Editor

Since the Lightning took over in 2012, the Crunch have brought in several skills coaches as well as a number of off-ice personnel like nutritionists and sports psychiatrists. But the upgraded facilities in Syracuse have been the biggest investment, Sarosy said.

The Lightning have been essential in transforming the Crunch’s offices and facilities at the Upstate Medical University Arena at the Oncenter, Sarosy noted. Tampa Bay’s general manager, Julien BriseBois, helped develop a blueprint for their weight room and even had a say about how players entered the arena, what they would see and where they would go each day.

“It’s always been a holistic approach, family type of thing,” Sarosy said. “It’s never ‘us and you,’ it’s always ‘we.’ And that’s the stuff I’ll always remember and that was instituted from day one.”

It’s that transparency and proactivity that Syracuse’s general manager Stacy Roest wishes he had when he was an AHL player. Roest played three full seasons for the Adirondack Red Wings in the mid-90s, earning his first NHL call-up with the Detroit Red Wings in 1998. But Roest had to do a lot of his development on his own. 

When we say we have future NHLers, we mean it. #StanleyCup | #TampaCuse pic.twitter.com/Mci361U9Sz

— Syracuse Crunch (@SyracuseCrunch) July 10, 2021

Roest, now in his ninth year with the Lightning organization, has been a part of the development of nearly every Lightning player that has suited up since then. The year before he joined the Lightning, the Crunch advanced all the way to the Calder Cup finals but lost in six games. The following season (2013-14), they missed the playoffs, recording 75 points and finishing below .500.

But as underwhelming as that season was, it became the stepping stone for some of the Lightning’s NHL stars, such as Yanni Gourde and Nikita Kucherov, who led Tampa through its recent cup runs.

Now, for a Lightning team that hasn’t had a first round pick in four of the last seven drafts, patience with developing prospects is what will maintain that success, Crunch head coach Ben Groulx said.

With fewer high-profile draft picks under their belt, the Crunch have sought to add veteran players to aid in the long-term development of their younger prospects. Labrie, who was on the 2013-14 Crunch team before bouncing around numerous minor league teams, is among that group.

So it was only fitting that Labrie dropped the gloves on Friday night as the Crunch were 20 minutes away from their first shutout loss of the season. The Crunch were outshooting the Comets by nine at that point, but they were trailing 3-0.

Three weeks earlier, Crunch defenseman Darren Raddysh recently made his NHL debut for the Lightning. He had moved around the AHL starting in 2017 after going undrafted. His younger brother, Taylor, was a second-round pick by the Lightning in 2016 and accumulated over 100 points in three seasons with the Crunch.

“To come in here and to be a part of this, it just feels like a family,” Raddysh said.

 

Danny Kahn | Design Editor

His favorite Lightning-Crunch moment was seeing Taylor hoist the 2021 Stanley Cup trophy. It makes Raddysh even more optimistic to continue on with the Lightning organization.

Taylor’s name is one of 31 on the team’s Stanley Cup championship wall on the lower level of the Oncenter. After each of their back-to-back titles, the Crunch highlighted players that had played in Syracuse and had their name embroidered on the Stanley Cup — 16 were honored in 2020 and 15 in 2021.

BriseBois invited Sarosy to Tampa for Game 5 of the 2021 Stanley Cup Finals. He sat in a suite with their entire front office staff. Once the title was clinched, Sarosy felt a tap on his shoulder. It was BriseBois, stopping to thank him and the Crunch organization for their developmental role as he was on his way to the locker room to celebrate with the rest of the Lightning.

“I can guarantee you not every NHL team is treating their AHL affiliate like that,” Sarosy said. “I have two Stanley Cup rings because of them. That’s not (a) given,” Sarosy said.

Published on January 23, 2022 at 11:09 pm

Contact Alex: ahcirino@syr.edu