Senior Reporter
The Syracuse Crunch open the 2026 Calder Cup Playoffs against the Cleveland Monsters in a best-of-five North Division Semifinal that starts Friday, April 24 at Rocket Arena in downtown Cleveland. Game 2 follows Sunday, April 26, also in Ohio, before the series turns north to Upstate Medical University Arena at The Oncenter War Memorial on Friday, May 1. The American Hockey League shortened travel for this round by putting the lower seed in charge of the first two games before handing the final three to Syracuse, if needed.
This is a team built around a scoring title, a goaltender whose name sat at the top of the league leaderboard for most of the winter, and a head coach new to the State Street bench but familiar to the Lightning pipeline. It is also a team that owns the four-game regular season series against Cleveland, two wins to one loss to one overtime loss, with both Syracuse wins coming in back-to-back home blowouts on March 21 and March 22.
This story came from public records we pulled ourselves
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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 included 31 power-play points, the most among any AHL forward this season. He tied for the league lead with five shorthanded goals and ran off a 20-game scoring streak that began February 20, the longest by any AHL skater in more than 17 years. Pelletier was named to the 2025-26 AHL First All-Star Team on April 16 and collected the John B. Sollenberger Trophy as the league’s scoring champion on April 19, joining Carter Verhaeghe in 2018-19 as the only Crunch skaters to take the title in franchise history. Two days before that, the organization handed him the team MVP award. Tampa Bay also gave him a five-game look at the NHL level during the season. Pelletier was originally a first-round pick by Calgary in 2019 and signed with the Lightning as a free agent on July 2, 2025.
Behind him, goaltender Brandon Halverson authored the most efficient season of his professional career. The 29-year-old went 24-11-6 in 42 games with a .906 save percentage, a 2.39 goals-against average, and six shutouts. Halverson sat at the top of the AHL in GAA at the All-Star break at 1.77 and led the league in shutouts by the end of the year. The Crunch named him both Defender of the Year and their nominee for the IOA/American Specialty AHL Man of the Year, the league’s community-service award. Halverson created “Halvy’s Saves for Recovery” this season, donating one dollar to Helio Health for every save he made in support of addiction recovery programs after losing his brother Justin in January 2023, a program that raised more than 5,500 dollars from fan donations during the year. He will carry the Game 1 assignment on the road in Cleveland.
Forward Dylan Duke claimed the team’s Offensive Player of the Year award after logging 31 goals and 55 points in 67 games, his 17 power-play goals leading the entire AHL. Conor Geekie, a 2022 first-round pick who came to Tampa Bay in the Mikhail Sergachev trade, took the Lamacchia Power Forward of the Year award with 59 points in 56 games and represented the Crunch at the 2026 AHL All-Star Classic. Rookie Lucas Mercuri won the Ephesus Brightest Prospect award. Defenseman Matteo Pietroniro led the team at plus-26, won the NBT Bank Plus/Minus Player of the Year honor, and took the Discount Shoe Repair “Sole” of the Crunch award for character. Right wing Ethan Gauthier won the Eastern Shore Insurance Agency Most Improved Player of the Year.
The Cleveland matchup, at a glance
Cleveland is the AHL affiliate of the Columbus Blue Jackets. The Monsters closed the 2025-26 regular season with 78 standings points and a fifth-place finish in the North Division, a step back from the first-round bye they earned a year ago but enough to set up this rematch against the Crunch, who finished second.
The clubs played four times in the regular season with Syracuse taking two of them, splitting a pair in Cleveland in December and then running Cleveland out of the War Memorial on back-to-back nights in March. The March 21 meeting ended 6-2 for the Crunch. The next night, Pelletier helped push the margin back to three goals in a 6-3 Syracuse win that began the offensive surge that carried him to the scoring title.
The series is a 2-3 format: two games in Cleveland, three at home in Syracuse if needed. That flips conventional home-ice advantage because a split in Ohio puts Syracuse in position to close the series at the War Memorial. The AHL uses best-of-five through Division Semifinals and Division Finals and expands to best-of-seven for the Conference Finals and the Calder Cup Finals.
The rivalry is also freshly scarred. In May 2024, Cleveland swept Syracuse 3-0 in the North Division Finals, winning Game 1 on home ice 1-0 on a Justin Pearson third-period goal, Game 2 on Cleveland ice 4-1, and Game 3 in Syracuse 6-4 to advance to the Eastern Conference Finals. That sweep knocked the Crunch out of a playoff run that had looked like their best shot at a Cup since the 2017 run to the Final.
New voice, same pipeline
Joel Bouchard is in his first full cycle as both head coach and general manager of the Crunch. Tampa Bay hired him on June 26, 2023 as the 10th head coach in franchise history, replacing Benoit Groulx after a seven-year run, and promoted him to general manager on July 7, 2025, giving him both jobs. Bouchard spent three seasons as head coach of the Laval Rocket, Montreal’s AHL affiliate, from 2018 through 2021 and went 83-67-14-10 across that run. He followed that with one season as head coach of the San Diego Gulls, Anaheim’s affiliate, where he guided the team to the 2021-22 Calder Cup Playoffs. As a player, Bouchard skated in parts of 11 NHL seasons between 1994 and 2008 with the Calgary Flames, Nashville Predators, Dallas Stars, Arizona Coyotes, New Jersey Devils, New York Rangers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and New York Islanders, and finished with 22 goals and 75 NHL points.
Defenseman Steven Santini, a 2013 second-round pick of the New Jersey Devils who has logged 85 NHL games across six seasons, was handed the C on October 10, 2025. Forward Boris Katchouk, forward Scott Sabourin, forward Jakob Pelletier, and defenseman Declan Carlile wear the alternate As. Santini was briefly recalled by Tampa Bay in late December before coming back to Syracuse for the playoff push.
The Tampa Bay affiliation, now in its 14th season, has been one of the most productive NHL-AHL pairings in the sport. Andrei Vasilevskiy, Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, Anthony Cirelli, Yanni Gourde, Alex Killorn, Tyler Johnson, and Jonathan Marchessault all skated on State Street before becoming NHL regulars. Vasilevskiy posted an 8-3-3 record in 14 Crunch starts in 2014-15 with a 2.34 GAA, a .918 save percentage, and two shutouts before Tampa Bay promoted him for his NHL debut later that season. Kucherov averaged more than a point per game during an early-season stop with Syracuse in 2013-14 before Tampa recalled him following a Steven Stamkos injury.
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 as the Onondaga County War Memorial, an early and architecturally ambitious example of single-span thin-shell concrete roof construction. It was designed by Edgarton and Edgarton and built between 1949 and 1951 as one of the premier multi-purpose arenas in the country at the time. The arena seats 5,800 for hockey, underwent major renovations in 1994 and 2018, and in 2012 became the first professional hockey venue anywhere to install LED lighting. Onondaga County announced a new four-million-dollar renovation in October 2025 that is still rolling through the building. Before the Crunch arrived, the arena hosted the Syracuse Nationals of the NBA from 1951 through 1963 and a rotating cast of minor-league hockey clubs.
Howard Dolgon, who founded the Syracuse Hockey Ownership Team in 1993 and coordinated the purchase of the Hamilton Canucks, moved the franchise south before the 1994-95 season. He remains owner, president, and chief executive 32 years later and was inducted into the New York State Hockey Hall of Fame in July 2024 and the inaugural class of the Syracuse Hockey Hall of Fame three months after that. The AHL honored him with the James C. Hendy Memorial Award as the league’s outstanding executive in 2010. 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 franchise has reached the Calder Cup Finals twice, in 2013 and 2017, losing both series four games to two to the Grand Rapids Griffins, including Martin Frk’s late winner in Game 6 of the 2017 series. Syracuse has never hoisted the Cup.
The franchise itself traces back to the Hamilton Canucks, who went 29-45-6 in 1992-93 and 36-37-7 in 1993-94 before Vancouver pulled the plug. Syracuse played its first home game on September 30, 1994, a 7-7 tie with the Albany River Rats in which Lonny Bohonos scored the first Crunch goal. The name “Crunch” came out of a public vote that considered five finalists.
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 Cleveland team that leans on forward Luca Del Bel Belluz, a second-round pick of Columbus who led Cleveland in scoring with 22 goals and 35 assists in 53 games. Pelletier leads the Crunch in first-assist rate, which usually travels in the postseason. The second is Halverson’s workload on the road and his rebound control against Cleveland’s shooting volume out of 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.
Tampa Bay leaned hard on its Syracuse affiliate during the final week, recalling Pelletier, Chaffee, Geekie, Duke, and Halverson at various points before reassigning them in time for the playoffs. That churn handed Bouchard a full roster for Game 1 but left little time for rhythm. Expect the first period in Cleveland to look ragged.
If the Crunch can earn a split or better in Ohio, they return home April 30 or May 1 with a chance to close the series on home ice. If Cleveland takes both in Ohio, Games 3, 4, and 5 all come to the War Memorial in a six-day window. Either way, AHL hockey on State Street runs deeper into April than it did a year ago.
The scouting report
Syracuse’s power play ran through Pelletier on the left half wall with Duke triggering one-timers from the right circle, a tandem that combined for 48 of the team’s power-play points on the year. 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-five hockey, were among the most stable in the North Division.
Cleveland’s five-on-five attack leans on Del Bel Belluz, forward Jack Williams, and forward Mikael Pyyhtia, a trio that produced in balanced fashion. The Monsters tend to sit in a 1-3-1 neutral-zone look and force the puck to the perimeter. The Crunch countered in March by using Katchouk and Sabourin on dump-and-chase cycles that generated second chances behind Cleveland’s defense. How quickly Syracuse forces Cleveland out of that structure may decide whether this one ends in three games or five.
Crunch home playoff tickets for Game 3, and for Games 4 and 5 if necessary, are available through the Upstate Medical University Arena box office at 515 Montgomery Street and through the team’s official channels. Single-game seats start at 30 dollars with military and youth discounts. Crunchman will be on the ice. Dippin’ Dots will fly. The playoffs are back on State Street.
Sources: Syracuse Crunch press releases (April 14, April 16, April 18, April 19), AHL.com, American Hockey League official announcements on Jakob Pelletier and John B. Sollenberger Trophy, Wikipedia (Syracuse Crunch, Cleveland Monsters, Upstate Medical University Arena, Joel Bouchard, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Hamilton Canucks), Tampa Bay Lightning press releases, Cleveland Monsters official announcements, Raw Charge, The Hockey Writers, OurSports Central, Spectrum Local News. Photos via Wikimedia Commons.
