Julie Stewart-Binks praises Crunch intern Heidi Knoll after inspiring story goes viral

The line brawl and the suspension that followed gave Syracuse’s April 8 meeting with Rochester its edge, but the moment that traveled farthest was not a hit or a scrum. It was the attention Julie Stewart-Binks gave to Heidi Knoll, the Crunch intern and Syracuse University women’s hockey forward whose story cut through the noise and was amplified by the AHL itself.

That mattered because Knoll is not just another name in a campus or team directory. The Ottawa, Ontario native wears No. 27 for Syracuse University, was listed as a junior in 2024-25 and served as an assistant captain, and her bio shows a player who built her profile the hard way: three seasons with the Nepean Junior Wildcats, where she served as captain, a 2024 Atlantic Hockey America All-Academic Team nod, invitations to Team Canada U18 Summer Camp and Team Ontario U18 Central Canada Challenge in 2021, and a gold medal at the 2019 Ontario U16 Summer Games. She also majors in sport management in the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics, which makes her presence around the Crunch part of a larger Syracuse pipeline, not a novelty.

That pipeline has mattered in Syracuse for years through the TampaCuse connection linking the Crunch and Tampa Bay Lightning since the 2012-13 season. Knoll’s profile fits that ecosystem neatly: a student-athlete, an academic standout and a hockey lifer moving through the same development web that keeps the Crunch tied to Syracuse University in a way few AHL markets can match.

The timing gave the story extra weight. Syracuse had already clinched a berth in the 2026 Calder Cup Playoffs on March 20, so every game and every off-ice moment now plays into a postseason narrative. The Crunch fell 3-2 to the Rochester Americans at Upstate Medical University Arena on April 8, then the AHL announced on April 10 that Crunch forward Ethan Czata had been suspended one game for an interference incident in that game, a sign of how tense the rivalry remains.

Rochester’s 2025 sweep of Syracuse in the North Division finals still hangs over these meetings, and that history helps explain why a human-interest moment resonated so sharply. In a stretch defined by playoff pressure and bad blood, Knoll’s recognition offered something different: a reminder that the AHL’s most shareable stories are not always the loudest ones. Sometimes the lasting image is the one that shows the league’s future in a college player, an intern role and a name that made people stop scrolling.