Good News York by Growth Mode Content - GNY EP.130 | Syracuse Crunch: Jim Sarosy

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

Inside the Syracuse Crunch: A Conversation with COO Jim Sarosy In this episode of Good News York, the host sits down with Jim Sarosy, the COO of the Syracuse Crunch hockey team. Sarosy discusses his journey from Long Island to becoming a significant figure in Central New York's hockey scene. He shares insights into the daily operations of managing a minor league team, the challenges and rewards of his role, and the unique relationship with their affiliate, the Tampa Bay Lightning. The conversation also covers the team's community impact, their innovative promotional nights, and the excitement surrounding big local developments like Micron. Sarosy also recounts the experiences and logistics behind hosting major events like the Morado Outdoor Classic and the Toyota Frozen Dome Classic. The episode ends with promises of future events and activities, embodying the dynamic and engaging nature of minor league sports. 00:00 Welcome to Good News York 00:23 Interview with Jim Sarosy, COO of Syracuse Crunch 01:23 Jim Sarosy's Journey to Syracuse Crunch 06:19 The Role and Responsibilities of a COO 09:57 Affiliations and Partnerships in Minor League Hockey 14:13 Hosting Major Events: Outdoor and Dome Classics 16:16 Facing the Challenges of Event Planning 17:25 Future Event Plans and Collaborations 18:33 Impact of Micron on the Community 19:30 Arena Renovations and Enhancements 21:40 Current Season Highlights 24:30 Promotional Nights and Community Engagement 26:52 Rivalries and Personal Anecdotes 28:13 Concluding Remarks and Final Thoughts

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and Unirold's 50th anniversary summer specials. Welcome to Good News, York, sponsored by Ads on the Go, get ads on the go.com. No, I did not make the team for the Syracuse Crunch. I am not a part of the team, I am not running the team. I'm not even watching a game. I'm doing something way cooler. I am here with the C-O-O of the Syracuse Crunch,

Mr. Jim Sorosi. Jim, thank you for bringing us here. Oh, thank you. This is great. You sure you don't want a spot in practice? Well, I did used to play goalie, but here's the thing. Everybody that I played goalie with grew up and got taller. I never did.

I mean, when I was coming up, I always thought I had a shot, you know, but I knew I was smaller. Today's goalies are monstrous. I would say in general, but hockey, we're very proud that you come in all shapes. All sizes. Look at our team right there right now. You'll see a little bit of difference. There is a little bit of a trend in the goaltending position, though.

There is. The crossbar is like above my head, so top shelf would be rough. But enough about me playing. That's a dream. I'm so happy to be here. You cannot live in Central New York or work in Central New York without knowing about the crunch, without loving the crunch. You guys are a huge part of the community.

You're the head honcho. And your story is fantastic because not only are you running the team, you're actually from the Syracuse area, Franklin Square. No, actually, I'm going to, I hope I don't mess up the whole interview. No, no. I'm Long Island. You are? Franklin Square, Long Island. Well.

On the bio, it's at Franklin Square, and there's a Franklin Square here. There is. And it does come up occasionally. But I am that story. I never planned on staying here. went to school in Central New York at SUNY Portland. I did my internship up here with The Crunch. My plan was a couple years, and then I wanted to go back home

and work for the Yankees or the Islanders. Heck yeah. But boy, and not words, not trying to come across as cheesy, did I fall in love with Central New York and the American Hockey League and this team, and 31 years later I'm still here, but. You have been here? Syracuse Ian now. I mean, even if you were from Long Island at this point,

you've been here since 1996, correct? Yes, I can't. Yeah, you're sorry, man. You're one of us now. So. I wear that's a badge of honor. It is a badge of honor. It's such a great town for sports, specifically hockey. Growing up, tell us a little bit about your background. I mean, I know you went to SUNY Cortland and your journey as far as that goes, but were you always a hockey fan? How did this, how did this kind of come about? Yeah, for sure. It was maybe a little bit of a boring background type of thing. I always joke. I didn't own a pair of jeans until I got to

college. I would come home from school, put on sports radio, you know, get the newsday, daily news posts, do all my clippings. I had my Yankee book and my I owner book. Just a die-hard sport fan, specifically baseball and hockey. And I think like a lot of folks, I came to that realization, boy, I'm not going to play at a high level. So what's the next best thing? And for me, my goal was to be involved in a sport that I loved and then ultimately, hopefully run a team one day. And that was the goal from a relatively young age. And, you know, all the steps of the ladder to get me to where I was today, but it's been, it's been great. It's such a dream for so many sports fans like myself, but there's really no clear-cut path, right?

I mean, you know that if you want to become a welder, you're going to go to welding school. You know, in this kind of business, it's not like, I'm going to go to, how did you kind of navigate figuring those steps of the ladder out? Yeah, there is no playbook per se. Like you said, there's no formula. We always joke if there was a formula, we would have bottled it a long time ago, and anyone could have done it. It's, from my journey, it was I wanted to make sure that I put myself in the best position when and if that opportunity came.

And how do you do that? It's all the things you learn in school and really in life. It's just hard work. Be positive. Keep your head down. You do the task at hand and do it with a smile on your face. What can I bring? How do I make the team a little bit better today than it was yesterday?

And then when those opportunities come, my goal was always to make it such a no-brainer decision for the owner to put. put me in that position and, you know, a couple breaks here and there, but I am a big believer in the harder you work, the more luck you have. And that's how it all came about. And there's no rhyme or reason to it. It's looking for the opportunities and making breaks, so to speak, with everything as well, too. And I had a great opportunity here two times. I interned with the club.

The PR person left halfway through a season, and I was in the right place at the right time. And then my next step was, okay, I'm in. Now I want to run a couple years after that. I think it was 2001. Our COO left. And I got the call from the owner saying, hey, you're running my team now. And that was it. And maybe a couple of years before I thought I was ready.

But I wanted to jump at it. Jumped right in. And I've been, like I said, it's so lucky. I get paid to go to a nice rink every day and run a professional hockey team. It's what you could imagine it would be. I love hearing you say that because, you know, you do see interviews with different general managers of sports organizations and sometimes they kind of play it up like yeah yeah no big deal you know i love hearing that you still have that that kid inside you that's like i can't believe

this i love i'm here you can maybe not see it on camera we're watching right now the team is like these are the sounds this is my background every day and for me as i've gotten a little bit older the benefit of being in a minor league in in the american hockey league specifically is it's a developmental league and it is awesome to be a very very very small part of people's journey as they try to get onward and upward to bigger and better things and everything, and that's what we do. And, you know, just to kind of paint a picture for those of you watching and or listening, you know, if you're a sports fan, it's cool just to be here while the crunch are practicing. As we're talking, pucks are hitting the net that's protecting us.

I think they're trying to shoot them at me, man. Meggy, can you tell them to stop? The snow, no, don't. They'll kill me. The snow from the ice is falling on our heads. I mean, this is as good as it gets. So you're the C.O. of the team, there's a lot that goes into being a CO, clearly.

Now, as a sports fan, the first thing we think of is like, oh, my God, do you get to deal with roster and moves and scouting. But I also know from meeting other GMs of minor league teams, there's some of the boring stuff. You've got to make sure the beer is cold. Can you kind of go through some of the things that you deal with, kind of peel the curtain back a little bit? Yeah, sure. I'm going to go right to last night. So normal work hours end last night. I go downstairs getting ready.

appearance at a corporate partner of ours and we also had a behind-the-scenes tour. So I wanted to make sure that got up and going but then I saw that one of our TVs was broken in the wait room. So I decided I was going to hang this TV before I went to the corporate partnership. TV hanging didn't go as well as I planned. Took me a little longer. So in the six o'clock hour I'm hanging a TV, seven o'clock hour I'm at an appearance, 7.30 we make a trade. So we have to talk to the new guy, get him all set, order the jerseys, get that all. Then I go home, watch Tampa Bay, which is our affiliate. After that game, I get a call saying we need to get a kid to Montreal for tonight, for the day this is being reported to play.

So I call Megan, who I call on everything. She helps me navigate to who, who's available, and everything. We finally got a staff member, and they're en route to Montreal right now. So those are my last seven or eight hours of work. But maybe after this I might be peeling a sticker off the dashboard or getting ready for a team event. But that's the beauty of minor league sport. Just what I pictured a day in your life would be like. That is, so I went to last night.

Yeah. I mean, this is, I mean, look, this is an ADHD person's dream. I mean, it's just, you're all over the place. There's so much that you do. I was curious, how much interaction does a minor league team or C.O. Have with your affiliate, is the Tampa Bay Lightning at this point. You know, how much are they involved? Very involved.

I mean, they, the way I try to explain it, lot of times is they make all the decisions on the hockey side all the moves all the signings all the trades all the releasing all the coach even at this level at this level but but we activate a lot of it so it's very common where okay we're bringing in this guy you know jim and your team you go make sure that that kid gets here we work through the immigration but we lean on our resources got you in that regard so so it's daily interaction but we have staff members for that something newer in the minor league hockey world. We have a team services person. Her job is to take care of everything off ice. We want these players getting better at what they do. We want the coaches worrying about

coaching. We want the equipment guys working about that. Medical on and on. So her job is to help all of those off ice type of thing. That's kind of a newer position there. I say the involvement is strong. It's wide ranging. You never know what type of requests you're going to get. But that's kind of in that lies the beauty of it as well too. Yeah. But it's going back to what I mentioned earlier it's I take it very serious it's our job to put the athletes to staff in a position to be the best version of themselves and that's what we try to work at each day and how can we do that one of the concepts is to eliminate a lot of those distractions that inevitably come sure teach learn and and all of that

but it goes back to putting them in a position to succeed so well said you're clearly the right man for the job not sure I mean I think this is an okay question ask if you can peel the this is something I personally always wanted to know. You notice with a lot of minor league clubs, especially in hockey, the team affiliation changes sometimes year to year. How does that process work? Or how is that, I guess, what are the logistics of all that? So we, there's 32 teams in our league, 32 NHL teams. Yep. So it's one for one. Twelve of those 32 teams are independent. The rest are owned by their National Hockey League teams. So for us, we have what I feel is the best partnership in all of

hockey with Tampa Bay. This is our 14th year with them. Um, and those deals are always negotiated and talked about and people marry up for different reasons and everything. You want to make sure your philosophies match up and everything. Sure. Um, we started out with Vancouver. We had a great 10 year run with Columbus. Yeah. Um, I think, you know, from what we kind of hear, they wanted to go with an all Ohio model and that's kind of where they wanted to push their affiliate, which made sense for them. Yeah. And, uh, ultimately that got us all to Tampa Bay, which is, which is, which is, which is, which is, been great. And the movement is a little bit of who's available at the time and all that kind of stuff. But I've learned as I've gotten through that you marry the people, not so much the

franchises. And you'll see sometimes people will follow GMs, NHLGMs, wherever they go, if they're comfortable with a situation. Sure. And what a time for you to be a part of the Tampa Bay Lightning franchise, because they are in the middle of what I consider a dynasty right now, just an incredible hockey club. And you're a part of that. Do you, uh, When they're winning up there, does that trickle down? Do you feel it here? Do you feel that energy and excitement down here? Oh, for sure.

It's a very unique dynamic because we'll have Syracuse employees and Tampa employees, but at the end of the day, we are one family. So, yeah, we take a tremendous amount of pride in Tampa's success, both on ice and business. We feel we contribute, you know, through many, many different avenues and everything, but to be associated with them, It's hard for me to articulate just how proud I am of that affiliation. Julian Breeswa is everything you could hope for in a partner.

His drive is determination, the resources that they give us. It's everything that you want. And it's a world of best practices. We want to be the best in every single area we can. And it's constantly tweaking. It's never thinking we know what's going on because we don't. I say if we win every game, we sell out every game, maybe, and I doubt it, but maybe we'll know what we're doing.

And until then, we got a ways to go. I'm curious, so when the team does change, like, so you wear the Columbus Blue Jackets, now you're affiliated with the Lightning. When the changeover happens, is that like a huge mix-up around here where you're kind of starting over, or is it kind of a smooth transition when that happens?

No, for sure. I mean, some areas you're running, it's, I know one of the popular phrases you're kind of drinking out of a fire hose, so to speak. Yeah, yeah. You know, from little things I think even we forget, from a team color change is huge. Just let alone on that.

That's good point. You're changing so much of everything when that happens. So, yeah, there's a lot of moving parts when an affiliation changes. So you've been here since 1996. I was going to say 95, 96. In 2001, in 2009, you were recognized by the league. You won the Ken McKenzie Award for, I don't want to butcher it. I don't know what the, just basically for being a badass.

COO. Tell me a little bit about the history of that award and what that meant to you to win that. No, they're, and I have to stress this as important, and don't judge me, they're team awards. They really are. They are. They happen to be the, you know, the face of the department at the time. I think going back with a lot of our bigger events, being the first team that hosted an outdoor game. I was going there next. Yeah, setting an indoor attendance record at the dome and working with those groups. Those bring a lot of eyes onto the organization and our brand. And those type of awards, I think, follow those type of achievements and everything. And that's really what they are.

The McKenzie is for the best marketer, best promoter of your team. That is not a one-person job by any means. What a selfless answer and so much respect. That's amazing for you to say, which leads me right to what you were talking about. I would assume a lot of why you won that award, especially particularly in marketing. You were the first one to ever host the Marabador Outdoor Game. That was in 2010, the Marabador Outdoor Classic, excuse me. And then the Toyota Frozen Dome Classic in 2014, the first and I think only game played in the dome.

And by the way, I read how much you had to go through to make that happen, dealing with the government, you know, locally and regionally. Can you talk a little bit about that? idea came about and what went into that. Yeah, both games were heavy lifts. Nope. It's a gentle cruising. You start to see the village, almost like a painting.

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Explore more than 350-plus undergraduate, graduate, and certificate programs at ASUonline.asu.edu. Questions. We couldn't have done it without phenomenal partners, and outdoor game was the state and the county stepping up, and then our corporate partners, Marabito, like you said, and then the staff, the staff were rock stars with that. The dome game was different because they had the infrastructure. They had the building and everything.

Where the outdoor game, we were literally building a rink on a dirt track. Yeah. with no hot water. So it was a challenge. The dome challenges were a little bit different, but Pete Sallow, the gentleman who runs the building up there, phenomenal.

Unbelievable gentleman, I'm so proud to have had that opportunity to work with them. The Y is we like challenges. We're proud of the area. This area is a hockey area. We wanted to be the first outdoor game. We were the first in our league. I think it was the fourth overall.

The dome gave us a venue where we could set an attendance record. And we hold it. And you did. Syracuse and Utica. And of all these teams in North America, Europe, we have the largest crowd ever to watch an indoor hockey game in this country. And it sees these two smaller markets.

It's something to be proud back. And we want to go in and do it again. It's so something to be proud of for obviously the events themselves speak for themselves. It was incredible. But people, I don't think people realize what a risk you took. Because a lot of, you know, it's so easy to say, well, why didn't other clubs do that? It's a huge risk financially, logistically, and you went out on a limb to do it. What gave you the courage to go, you know what?

These are two huge events. How did you know you could pull it off? Did you know? No, there were sleepless nights for sure and for different reasons. And you're right with what you said. The risk was tremendous. So to have an owner in Howard Ogden who believed in the staff and the community and the area to do it was what we needed. Yeah.

So that set our foundation to move ahead and try the events. Because you're right, if there was a snowstorm or if we lost the weekend, it could have been a disaster for the organization. That would have set us back months, years and everything. But to have his confidence was what I needed and what kind of led the staff to do it. But no, there were crazy nights, especially with, I remember in the outdoor game a couple times, like, did we do the right thing? Is this worth it?

Are we taking away from the poor business? all that kind of stuff. And then the dome game was nerve-wracking because it was daunting to have a challenge. We play in a 6,000-ish-seat arena to have to do 30,000. And you can't hide. If the people don't come, they don't come.

There's no way to hide that. No, you can't hide that. So that's where a lot of my stress came from for that game. But boy, do people come out, and they made them worthwhile. Any plans to do that again? I sure hope so. So Grandstand was knocked down at the fairground. That's right.

We've had some conversations with the baseball club about maybe going over there and doing it. It's a little light on seats, but I think we can make it work. We have an end with Jason. Yes. I'll smack them around and make it happen. You call me on strong. I'm interested in partnering up. Awesome.

You heard it here first. You know, to do that. And then, Dom, yes, I want to get back in there. I want to reset the record. And for us, it's, you think about it in the whole country. There's not a lot of buildings that host three major sports, let alone two, with basketball, football and lacrosse and a rink doesn't go in overnight we need about a 10-day window and the challenge is that building is used all the time yeah um so for us to block out that many days has been

the challenge to try and get back there but yeah enough people i think want it Pete's great to work with and i'm hoping we're back there and i'm hoping we're outside again well i hope it happens because as a sports fan especially a hockey fan i mean what is better than those type of of events and i can't can't believe you would uh you you pulled it off uh and set a record doing it The Micron is coming. You're talking about the community and being a part of the community. Micron is kind of on everybody's radar in every industry because it's one of the biggest things that happened since the Erie Canal.

Are you feeling the effects of that yet? Is there any planning involved in preparation for that? I think the feeling, yes. I mean, we're Central North. We live here, so it's hard not to get excited. Sure. With the buzz that's going around. and the anticipation and everything.

And we want to position ourselves as, you know, as an opportunity or an outlet for their employees to enjoy. And that's really what it is. It's no, but it's really at the end of the, I guess it's no different than a company that potentially is going to bring in 20 people all the way up. It's all scaled a little bit. But the pure numbers and the pure excitement of that is hard not to get excited about. So, you know, and our prep is open arms, what can we do?

Sure. It's really that simple. Yeah. I want to talk about the season, but first, I would be remiss not to ask this. So I've been coming to games with my wife, mostly before kids, and we've seen this arena kind of change its face a little bit here and there. It's absolutely gorgeous, like gorgeous in here. Talk a little bit about the renovations that have been done and when and what people could expect here.

We're very proud of where we play. It's one of the older buildings. We kind of say it's the oldest. There's one with an older cornerstone out of the 64. We're in 1951, so it's a very special anniversary coming up for the building, 75th year. So for us, it's really maximizing what space we have at the same time, making sure that we pay due respect to the veterans that this was built for. And I think we've kind of married the two up. You'll see they have spaces in here.

We have spaces in here. I'm very proud of that. It's a message that I like to share with our athletes as they come in and our staff that come in. We're proud that we bring so many people here to see their exhibits and their mentions and then all the military programs that we do. But we're always constantly trying to max out what we can have here. This most recent expansion was a new sound system, which was a little outdated. And then the new seats that we're sitting in right now, so the new lower bowl seats are in.

Very comfortable. This year, yes, though, quite different than what was here prior. So those were our upgrades. But throughout the years, we've made many of them. one of the more challenging ones was we had to extend the ice. We were only 193 feet long. You're supposed to be 200 feet. But that was very important for us to continue to attract NHL partners

was to make sure that got fixed. So now we're a regulation for the ice and all little things here and there throughout the years. But we're very proud of where we play. Man, what a beautiful answer. I have so much respect for you. You know, it's so easy for organizations to slap a name onto an arena and call it good.

The fact, you know, that, you know, it's named, you know, after veterans, and you highlight that here. It's so special. I mean, there's a beautiful mural I'm staring at over there, and I just wanted to commend you on that. I think that's wonderful. No, that takes a lot of people, but that's something we are sincerely very proud of. Yeah, and you should be. A couple more questions. I want to be respectful of your time, but we've got to talk about the 25 season.

You guys are sitting right now at 13 and 8. You're tied for second place. I got it right here just so I'm good. And one of your players, your left winger, and I'm going to butcher his name, Jacob, I want to make sure I say the last name right. Do you want me to go first? You go first. Jacob, Peltier.

Peltier. Peltier. See, I was going to say Pelletier. Pellie, Jacob, he's third in the H.L right now in scoring. Talk to me about the season. How do you feel about it? And what can we look forward to? Yeah, it's a great group.

It really is. I don't know, but if you ask anybody who's going to run their team, I think 90% of them are 95% are going to say it's a great group. I've thoroughly enjoyed this year's team. There's a little bit more turnover than we usually have. We turned over about 60, 65% of the team, which you're always used to in minor in American League turnover, but the players we brought in led by Mr. Peltier and some of the others have been,

I don't want to say breath of fresh air because that would be disrespectful to guys who were before, but they brought a different type of energy to the team this year, and it's been a lot of fun working with them, getting to know them. The results have been positive so far, but there's a long, long, long way ahead with everything. But we're putting ourselves, I think, in a position to be in the conversation. Don't tell him, I butchered his name because I want to live. I just want to note real quick on the side.

See, I love hockey for many reasons. I also love that through generations, the mentality of hockey players has not changed. While we've been doing interviews, they were purposely firing pucks at the glass, and then two other guys were checking each other into the glass, and then, like, hugging each other and interrupting. And I just, yeah. You don't even have to answer anything. I just want to make note of that's what hockey players do and it never changes.

I honestly think, and I don't know what your opinion is, I just thought of this. I think hockey players, and obviously you're a little biased, I genuinely think they are the toughest athletes on the planet. Oh, without question. Without question, right? It's no, and again, I don't want to be disrespectful to other sports, but it's not even a competition at all. It's not. It's not.

Because even in full contact sports like the NFL, you have a break every time you go to the huddle. With hockey, you've got to have the cardio, you've got to have the physicality, you've got to be tough. I mean, we've seen, how many times have you seen guys getting teeth knocked out and they're like, man, it's a badge of courage? No, it really is. Yeah, football is a little bit of a challenge. I mean, it's in a 60-minute game, only when you're comparing.

I'm not trying to take anything away from that. Sure, no, no, no, I brought it up. Don't worry. You're playing 9, 10, 11 minutes of game time. Now, granted, that's a tough 10, 11 minutes of time, but it doesn't compete with what our athletes are going through at the speeds they're going through with the frozen puck there on ice trying to skate. Jim, I go ice skating with my kids. My feet are hurting after five minutes and I got to sit down.

So, I mean, it's absolutely. It's very impressive. Incredible. One of the great things you do here, and I say better than most, is your promotional nights. And there's always something to look forward to. If you want to plug and just tell us about some of the special fan nights coming up and some of the promotional things you guys are doing. maybe your favorite? Oh, we're always looking for ideas. I mean, the genesis of those when we sit

down in the summer is how can we attract maybe non-crunch fans or casual crunch fans to a game? So that's where the hockey romances, the ogre nights, the hockey is for everyone nights, that's where all of those come from. And that's, well, that's the goal of those is to bring in people to the buildings and everything, and they have a lot of fun doing it as well. It reinforces what we do for our season ticket base, which is that bringing that fun and that difference to every game. And you never want to lose, but kind of the measure of that is you're in the car on the way home and maybe we lose five to one that day. And they're like, you know what? It's stunk, but we had a good time. And that's where a lot of those come through. We have a lot of traditional nights like our military

night, our hockey fights to cancer night. And then we have a lot of fun nights. Like I mentioned, the most recent being the hockey romance night, we have an ogre night coming up here. We're going to turn Memorial Hall into a swamp. It's going to be pretty cool. and see, and, you know, that's part of our Comic-Con series, where we'll do a Star Wars and a Wizarding Night. There you know, a lot of them, other markets do. We try to put our own twist on it. We're constantly looking to bring in celebrities

that can help enhance the game experience and everything. But it really is, we try to hit every demographic, because that's what hockey is. We want everyone to experience this. No, it's a great place, a safe place to come and have at it. And after this, you mentioned, I caught wind. you guys are going to have the hockey players wrap gifts and do it like you're judging them on that yeah no thanks for so each december we grab one week and we rebranded our week of assist so each of the seven days in that week we do something

community based and everything so yesterday we were at peace ink dropping off some items that they needed for boys and girls club today each athlete was required to bring in a in a gift that we're going to donate later for the the toy drive but to put our little fun in it, we're going to have a rapping contest with it as well, too. So players, rap, staff, judges, and we all have a little bit of fun with that. That is fantastic. All right, one more question. So, you know, the I-90 rivalry, right? Utica, Syracuse.

I'm kind of from the Utica area. You featured that in the Toyota Frozen Dome game. So you know about rivalries. You see my hat. Now, I'm an I'm going to Portland. I see it. I know. I know.

I'm an Ithica college grad. You're a Cortland Red Dragon. For those you that don't know, we are rivals. Not today. There is Cortica jug, the biggest little game in the country. Talk to me about what that means to you. And have you ever been to one of those? Oh, for sure.

Not recently, just because of the career path I've taken. But when I was there, absolutely, how can you not be, right? Exactly. The campus is empty out for all of that. I think my, I mean, I have to maybe ask Megan, we have one Ithaca grad on our staff. And I think 78. You pay them below minimum wage. Seventy-eight,

people. That's how I did that. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So, um, it's, to see the attention that's drawn on that game is wonderful and the success that both programs have had is really neat. Yeah, you guys won the state championship last, two years ago? The last year? I don't remember.

I think it was three, maybe three, two years ago. I can't. We hired a young man the year after and that hurt him a little bit. I bet. He missed by a year. I bet. It is the biggest little game in the country and it's amazing. They're actually going back to Yankee Stadium next year. I don't know if you heard that. maybe we'll have to go. All right, well, listen, Jim,

I can't think you enough. I just have one last question, and not today, but do you think at some point, I've always had this dream of getting to ride the Zamboni? Absolutely. We can have to make it happen. And I have to admit something. So I go to Cornell.

You want to drive it or just ride it? Oh, Jesus Christ, I can drive it? I think we can make that happen too. You're talking to the right people. Megan, can he drive the Zambone? Yes, you can. I don't know if I want to do that. I don't know if that's a good idea.

I have the conditioner up so you can't mess up the ice. Because... That'll be your safety net. I live in Ithaca, so you know, Cornell hockey is huge there. And by the way, I've talked about it on GNY Sports. It's one of the most amazing experiences you can have hockey experiences. But I will admit, you know, I see little kids riding the Zamboni, and I'm like, well, I'm 40, so I'm not going to ask. This is my chance.

Absolutely. Oh, Jim, you're the best. Any, anything else you want to plug or say, I can't thank you enough for your time. I was real enjoyable. I appreciate it. I really appreciate you. Syracuse Crunch. Come out to a game.

for nothing else, because it's a blast. And it's been a pleasure meeting you. You're a great guy. And I wish you the best of luck. So thank you. From good news, I appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, all right, man. Let's go.

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