Rochester, N.Y. (WGR 550) – The Rochester Americans lost in overtime to the Syracuse Crunch, 4-3, on Sunday, which now evens the best-of-5 series at 1-1.
For the second-straight game, the Amerks blew a 2-0 lead, but this time, they couldn’t win anyway.
After Linus Weissbach gave Rochester a 2-0 on a breakaway at 13:00 of the second period, the Crunch decided they were going to just hit everything that moved. They went out of their way to not only hit, but clobber every Amerks player they could. In my mind, it worked.
Amersk head coach Seth Appert disagreed, though, saying it’s a physical series throughout, and his team has been up to the task.
I thought they had been up to it in the two games until they got the two-goal lead Sunday. It seemed that Rochester wore down from the constant physicality, which meant a lot of time spent defending and very little time creating around Crunch goalie Brandon Halverson.
Their other problem was the Syracuse goals scored were similar. They all started with Mason Jobst, Brandon Biro, Justin Richards and Jiri Kulich losing defensive zone draws.
On two of the goals against Rochester, the puck went back to defenseman Phiippe Myers and he blasted the puck with a lot of traffic around Amerks goalie Devon Levi. One was tipped in by Jordy Bellerive, and the other was deflected in by Gage Gonclaves.
Crunch defenseman Sean Day came in from the point and had a puck squirt out of him with a wide-open net in front of him that gave Syracuse its first lead of the series in the third period. They had gone 109:03 in the series without leading.
Rochester seemed out of energy to beat the Syracuse trap, but with 3:54 left in regulation, Jobst dug deep and got the puck in the middle, setting up a screened goal to send the game to overtime.
At 10:56 of overtime, though, Biro lost another huge faceoff to Gabriel Fortier. Not only did Biro lose the draw, but he didn’t take Fortier, who went straight to the net to tip in Declan Carlile’s shot.
Despite the loss, Appert knows how to get his team up off the mat in the Calder Cup Playoffs.
The Amerks won’t travel to Syracuse for Game 3 until Thursday, so you can bet Appert is going to be working with his team hard on winning draws and not being lazy on faceoff coverages.
This is not a lazy coach or a lazy team, so I would think you will see substantial improvement in these areas by Thursday. You just can't let your man get away from you to be open to tip home a goal.
Syracuse is big, and they are always around the net. Rochester is also going to have to devise a plan to get those big forwards away from the net, where they’re tipping pucks.
Levi wasn’t happy with himself either, as he said he would be watching a lot of video to get himself better prepared to stop some of those deflections ahead of Game 3.
Kulich had just one assist in the two games, and I really haven't noticed him all that much in either game. He's to the point now in his second season where he needs to be one of their top players, and so far, he hasn't been.
Watching captain Michael Mersch score the first goal of the game on the power play showed us everything that the Amerks are willing to do to score a goal with the extra man that most of the Sabres aren’t. By the time Mersch banged home the puck while standing in the crease, he had three teammates with him crashing the net.
The Rochester players may be quite a bit smaller than the Syracuse players, but they have no problem competing near the Crunch crease.
What they really have to figure out now is if they get another two-goal lead, how can they get that third goal to make it a three? That will make it easier to defend the lead.
Last year, Appert and his team fell behind to Syracuse 2-0 in games before winning the next three games to win the series. I just can’t see them letting one loss defeat them overall.
