By Charles Shack, Senior Reporter
The Syracuse Crunch close the 2025-26 AHL regular season with the division’s most dangerous first line, a goaltender who led the league in save percentage, and a third-place finish in the North that sends them into the Calder Cup Playoffs against the Belleville Senators. Puck drop on Game 1 arrives the week of April 20 at CAA Arena in Belleville, with Game 2 expected at Upstate Medical University Arena at The Oncenter War Memorial the following weekend.
This is a team built around a scoring title, a Vezina-track backstop, and a coaching hand new to the bench but familiar to the Lightning pipeline. It is also a team that owns the season series against Belleville, four wins to three, and one that piled up 22 home regulation-or-overtime wins, the highest count at 800 South State Street since 2021-22.
Pelletier paces the league, Halverson wins the crease
Forward Jakob Pelletier finished the regular season as the American Hockey League’s scoring leader at 77 points in 63 games, a line of 28 goals and 49 assists that also included 31 power-play points, the most among any AHL forward. Pelletier tied for first in the league with five shorthanded goals and carried a 20-game scoring streak into the final stretch, the longest such run by any AHL skater in 17 years. He was named to the AHL First All-Star Team on April 16 and collected team MVP honors from the Crunch organization two days later. Tampa Bay also gave him a five-game look at the NHL level.
Behind him, goaltender Brandon Halverson authored the most efficient season of his professional career. The 29-year-old took home the team’s Defender of the Year award, won the IOA/American Specialty AHL Man of the Year for community service, and ranked at the top of the AHL in save percentage, goals-against average, and shutouts by season’s end. Halverson started the bulk of the 72-game schedule and will carry the Game 1 assignment on the road in Belleville.
Forward Dylan Duke claimed Offensive Player of the Year for the Crunch, Conor Geekie took Power Forward of the Year, rookie Lucas Mercuri was named Brightest Prospect, and defenseman Matteo Pietroniro led the team at plus-26 and won the Heart award. Right wing Ethan Gauthier won Most Improved Player.
The Belleville matchup, at a glance
Belleville is the AHL affiliate of the Ottawa Senators and finished sixth in the North to draw Syracuse. The two clubs played seven times in the regular season with Syracuse taking four, including a 2-1 win in Belleville on February 18. The Senators punched back in the final weekend, including a 6-4 home win in Belleville on April 17 and a meeting at the War Memorial on April 18 that closed the regular season on Syracuse Saturday.
AHL first-round series in 2026 are best-of-three. The higher-seeded Crunch will host the deciding Game 3 if the series goes the distance. Division semifinals expand to best-of-five, division finals remain best-of-five, conference finals and the Calder Cup Finals are best-of-seven.
New voice, same pipeline
Joel Bouchard is in his first season behind the Syracuse bench, hired by Tampa Bay in 2023 to replace Benoit Groulx after Groulx’s seven-year run. Bouchard spent four seasons as head coach of the Laval Rocket and one year with the Anaheim Ducks organization, and the Crunch’s structured neutral-zone forecheck and high forward-zone entry rate this season carry his fingerprints. Forward Boris Katchouk, forward Scott Sabourin, forward Jakob Pelletier, and defenseman Declan Carlile wear the alternate As beneath captain Steven Santini, who was handed the C on October 10.
The Tampa Bay affiliation, locked in through at least 2026-27, has been stable since 2012. It has also been productive: Andrei Vasilevskiy, Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov, Anthony Cirelli, Yanni Gourde, Alex Killorn, Tyler Johnson, and Jonathan Marchessault all passed through Syracuse before becoming NHL fixtures. Vasilevskiy in particular posted an 8-3-3 record in 14 starts with the Crunch in 2014-15, a 2.34 goals-against average, and a .918 save percentage before Tampa Bay recalled him for an NHL debut on December 16, 2014.
The building, the crowd, and the ice
The Crunch play at Upstate Medical University Arena at The Oncenter War Memorial, 515 Montgomery Street in downtown Syracuse. The building opened on September 12, 1951, underwent renovations in 1994 and 2018, and seats 5,800 for hockey inside a footprint that scales to 7,200 for in-the-round concerts. Onondaga County owns the arena. Before the Crunch arrived from Hamilton, Ontario, in 1994, the building hosted the Syracuse Nationals of the NBA from 1951 through 1963 and a rotating cast of minor-league hockey clubs.
Howard Dolgon bought the franchise in 1993 and moved it south from Hamilton after the 1993-94 season. Dolgon also invented Crunchman, the superhero mascot that debuted in 1994, was shelved for Al the Ice Gorilla during the Columbus affiliation from 2000 to 2010, and returned with the Tampa Bay tie-up in 2012. The current logo is built around Crunchman holding a stick and throwing a punch. The franchise has reached the Calder Cup Final twice, in 2013 and 2017, losing both to the Grand Rapids Griffins. Syracuse has never hoisted the Cup.
What to watch in Round 1
Three things will decide this series. The first is whether Pelletier can carry his even-strength production onto a Belleville team that killed the fourth-most penalties in the North. He leads the Crunch in first-assist rate, which usually travels in the postseason. The second is Halverson’s workload and rebound control on Belleville’s shooting volume from the mid-slot. The third is Syracuse’s blue-line depth behind Santini and Pietroniro, where Declan Carlile’s first-pass accuracy has carried the zone exits all season.
If the Crunch win the series opener in Belleville, they can close it out Saturday, April 25 at the War Memorial. If they drop Game 1, Game 3 at home becomes a single-elimination night with the winter-long home-ice edge on the line. Either way, AHL hockey on State Street runs deeper into April than it did a year ago.
The scouting report
Syracuse outscored opponents at home by 35 goals, the franchise’s best home goal differential since 2018-19. The power play ran through Pelletier on the left half wall with Duke triggering one-timers from the right circle. The penalty kill ranked in the AHL’s top third for most of the second half. Halverson’s numbers at five-on-five, the metric that tends to survive into best-of-three hockey, were the most stable in the North.
Belleville counters with forward Arthur Kaliyev, an AHL First All-Star pick who scored in bursts against Syracuse during the regular season. Ottawa’s affiliate tends to sit back in a 1-3-1 neutral-zone trap, and the Crunch countered by using Katchouk and Sabourin on dump-and-chase cycles that generated second chances behind the defense. How quickly Syracuse forces Belleville out of its structure may decide whether this one ends in two games or three.
Crunch home playoff tickets for any deciding Game 3 are available through the Upstate Medical University Arena box office at 515 Montgomery Street and through the team’s official channels. Crunchman will hand out shirts. Dippin’ Dots will fly. The playoffs are back on State Street.
Sources: Syracuse Crunch press releases (April 16, April 17, April 18), AHL.com, Wikipedia (Syracuse Crunch, Upstate Medical University Arena, Andrei Vasilevskiy), Tampa Bay Lightning press releases, Belleville Senators official announcements, FloHockey playoff watch, Raw Charge. Photos via Wikimedia Commons.
