Scouting the Syracuse Crunch

The Crunch enter the contest in last place in their division and tied for last in the conference with a 4-7-0-0 record. They are in the bottom third of the league in power play goals and in penalty killing. They enter the contest on a five game losing streak, having lost to Cleveland, two games to Grand Rapids, Wilkes-Barre and Hamilton. They have lost six out of the last seven games. They last won against the Amerks on October 22.

Gary Agnew leads the Crunch. He has a .526 winning average which seems disappointing compared to some of the coaches we’ve seen, but which is the best the Crunch have ever had. Crunch are affiliated with Blue Jackets.

The Crunch list three people in pipes, Andrew Penner has a 2.7 GAA last season. 3.00 so far this year. Also in pipes is Pascal Leclaire. Even worse at 2.34 GAA, 4.01 this season. And a Professional Try Out with Mike Ayers who played at Dayton in the ECHL last season. He had a 2.90 GAA.

Two familiar faces at the Crunch: Mike Hartigan played for the Wolves in the 2002-3 season. Last season, with the Crunch, he had 59 points. Also, Ben Simon, from our team last year, scored 21 points for us in our last season.

Rookie Geoff Platt has been bouncing around the OHL, most recently in Erie where he scored 79 points last season. The rookie is ranked 14th scorer in the AHL so far this season with 10 goals and 14 points. This tops the current crop of rookies and includes five power play goals, two short hand goals also among the leaders of the AHL.

On defense, Aaron Johnson and Andy Delamore are ranked 9th and 10th d-men with nine points each. Delamore had six power play assists, which is among the best of the AHL.

The juniors of note include Joe Motzko who played for St. Cloud State in 2003. Last season, at the Crunch, he scored 66 points. Alexandre Picard played for the Lewiston team of the Quebec juniors. In 2003-4 he scored 85 points for Lewiston, 80 for them in 2003-4. Marc Methot was a member of the London Knight Memorial Cup team. Andrew Murray scored 38 points for Bemidji State last season.

Tyler Kolarik played for Harvard two seasons ago, where he scored 30 points. Andy Canzanello is out of Colorado College. Ole-Kristian Tollefsen played for the Brandon Wheat Kings.

Brandon Sugden is one of their enforcers with 252 Pims last season. He has 59 Pims so far this year, which is just five minutes behind the Caveman’s.

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