Amerks grew as a team, but season came to a sudden and disappointing end

As unexpected as their run to the AHL Eastern Conference finals was last spring, you can make the argument that the Rochester Amerks’ elimination from the North Division semifinals Friday night was even more surprising.

“This right now doesn’t feel real to me, it just happened so quick,” captain Michael Mersch said in the aftermath of the Amerks’ season-ending 5-2 loss to the arch rival Syracuse Crunch. “You’re practicing all week and you’re gearing up for a game and bang, it’s over.”

The finality of the postseason is jarring, as Mersch alluded to. The Amerks pulled off an incredible victory in Game 4 six days earlier, rallying from a 3-0 third period deficit to ultimately win 4-3 in overtime to save their season.

But then they had to wait until Friday to get back on the ice to try and put the Crunch away at Blue Cross Arena with 10,578 fans roaring behind them. For whatever reason, though, the Amerks came out flat, fell behind 2-0 in the first 10 minutes and a gritty, veteran Syracuse team never relinquished the lead.

Amerks coach Seth Appert was asked whether the six-day layoff between Games 4 and 5 - ridiculous AHL scheduling in the name of maximizing revenue for weekend attendance - hurt his team given how energized they were after their dramatic victory six long nights earlier.

“I’ve said this before, I think momentum’s only as good as your next shift or your next practice,” Appert said. “You could have played a day or two later and you don’t know how that’s going to respond. You don’t know at all if the other team is even shook at all by the loss. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about that stuff because I like to worry about the things we can’t control.”

Coming off their performance in 2023 when they defeated Syracuse and Toronto in best-of-five playoff series, then took eventual Calder Cup champion Hershey to six games, there were lofty expectations heaped on the Amerks entering this season because so many of the players were returning.

They started well, 5-1-1 in October, then stumbled around a bit for two months as they battled the usual array of injuries and call-ups to the parent Buffalo Sabres and were a mundane 13-12-3 when they went to Utica on Dec. 30. That night they won 3-2 in a shootout to start a 6-1-1 stretch and Appert and several of his veterans began to feel something special was coming.

“Yeah, I think right in the middle of the year, those are kind of the dog days and when you’re in those games in the North Division, tough games and you see a group really come together and bond and that’s inside the rink outside the rink,” defenseman Ethan Prow said of this tight-knit group. “You don’t get that every year and that’s when you start realizing that you can put something special together.”

There was a lull at the end of February which saw them lose five out of six including four straight, but over their last 20 games the Amerks were as good as any team in the AHL, a scorching 15-4-1. They had a chance to win the North Division on the last day of the season, but Cleveland won its final game to tie Rochester with 88 points and by virtue of a tiebreaker, the Monsters were awarded first place.

So, rather than opening the playoffs against Belleville, the Amerks had to face a better Crunch team, one that was eager to turn the tables after it blew a two-games-to-none lead to Rochester last year.

The Amerks were the younger team, and that’s the way it usually is for them because the Sabres prefer to have a prospect heavy roster in Rochester rather than one, like Syracuse’s, that is filled with AHL veterans. The Sabres believe development in the AHL is essential, particularly for their high draft choices of which there are many - Jiri Kulich, Isak Rosen, Noah Ostlund, Anton Wahlberg, Viktor Neuchev, Alexandr Kisakov and Ryan Johnson to name a few.

Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams was at the arena Friday, and he was surely disappointed that this group - which also includes goalie Devon Levi - won’t get the additional opportunity to gain high-intensity experience in these playoffs.

Levi, though, believes the battle for first place down the stretch, and the five games against Syracuse, was hugely valuable to him and the others.

“I didn’t think it would be this fun,” Levi said of playing in the AHL after having gotten a taste of the NHL late last year and then for portions of this year. “It was one of the most fun teams I’ve had to play for. It was just an unbelievable chapter. I came in more of a professional mindset, like coming in, do my job, just focus on my game and give the team the best chance. But I think it became more than that. … Everyone here is a great teammate and we’ll be teammates for the rest of our lives.”

For Appert, this is his last go around in Rochester because he is being promoted to Buffalo to serve as one of new coach Lindy Ruff’s assistants.

As he departs Rochester, he will look back on 2023-24 fondly, despite the sad and sudden end.

“I just told them how much I love them, how grateful I am to have the privilege to coach them,” Appert said, recalling his post-game words in the locker room. “Unreal group. I’ve said this, but I’ve had to stop practice two times all year to yell at them. They practice hard, they care about each other, they treat each other the right way, they treat our sports staff the right way, just how good of a group of men on and off the ice.

“I’ve coached 29 years. You’d love that every year but that’s not the way it works, and this group had it. That’s why we became the team we became in the second half of the season. That’s why this stings even more. I’d love to win a Calder Cup, but probably more importantly, I’d love to just get to coach them in practice this coming week.”

Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana. To subscribe to Sal's newsletter, Bills Blast, which comes out every other Friday during the offseason, please follow this link: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Rochester Amerks out of playoffs after loss to Syracuse Crunch