As calendar flips, Amerks needs to start finding ways to win
On the first night of December, the Rochester Amerks ventured up to Belleville, Ontario to take on the Senators - always a tough assignment - and came away with a 3-2 victory that was decided by a shootout.
In that game, goalie Devon Levi - who had just been sent down by the Buffalo Sabres for what turned out to be a brief two-game reboot - made his AHL debut and was outstanding as he stopped 40 of 42 shots and then all four shootout attempts he faced.
By improving to 11-5-2, the Amerks were tied for second place in the North Division and were looking like a team that had a real chance to repeat some of the glory it enjoyed last spring when Rochester took eventual Calder Cup champion Hershey to six games in the Eastern Conference finals.
Injuries pile up for the Rochester Americans
Since then, it has been a mighty struggle for the Amerks as they have dealt with a rather ridiculous amount of injuries as core players like goalie Dustin Tokarski, defensemen Ethan Prow, Zach Metsa, and Joseph Cecconi, and forwards Michael Mersch, Brett Murray, Linus Weissbach, Brandon Biro, Filip Cederqvist, Tyson Kozak, Brendan Warren and Alexandr Kisakov have all missed time.
The majority of those players were involved in the 2023 playoff run and not surprisingly, those absences, several of which overlapped, created problems for the Amerks as their line combinations and defensive pairings were disrupted and several players from the lower-level East Coast league were trying to fill in.
Where the Amerks are in the standings
The Amerks closed out calendar year 2023 last weekend having gone 4-7-1 in 12 December games, never scoring more than three goals in any of those games. They are now tied for fourth in the division with 31 points (14-12-3), they lost all five December home games at Blue Cross Arena, and what is really crazy is they have a mere five victories achieved in the regulation 60 minutes all year which is the second-fewest in the AHL.
The good news, according to coach Seth Appert, is that throughout a month that included tough opponents such as Hershey, Syracuse, Springfield, Cleveland, Providence and Hartford - all of whom have more points - he saw his team competing hard, especially in the defensive end.
“The last seven, eight games have felt like playoff hockey and it’s been really good opponents, very good goaltenders, heavy opponents, pretty low-scoring games,” Appert said following the 4-2 loss to Hershey last Friday night in front of the largest regular-season home crowd (9,092) since 2018. “This is the best I’ve felt about our team all year. I love the way we’ve played. We’ll win a lot long-term if we play like that.”
Ah, but there’s the caveat. All the good work the Amerks are putting in is not translating in the standings and now that we’re on to January, this team needs to start making a push or it will be a quiet spring in the downtown arena.
“We played very good (against Hershey), but there’s been too too much of that lately; we’ve got to get over the hump,” Appert said. “It’s good signs these last eight games, we’re playing really good hockey and our team defense has improved dramatically. But we’re finding ways to lose games instead of finding ways to win games.”
Appert missed the Amerks’ last game, a solid 3-2 victory at Utica Saturday which they won in an eight-round shootout that was finally decided by Linus Weissbach. Appert was up in Buffalo coaching the Sabres during their 3-2 overtime victory over Columbus, and then again Sunday night in Ottawa where they got rolled 5-1, because Sabres head coach Don Granato was ill and could not be behind the bench.
Tyson Jost brings a veteran presence to the Rochester Americans
The eight-year NHL veteran, who back in 2016 was the No. 10 overall pick in the first round of the NHL Entry Draft by Colorado, made a sparkling Amerks debut last weekend.
This wasn’t something the 25-year-old was thrilled about because after playing 442 NHL games with the Avalanche, Minnesota Wild and Sabres, Jost said confidently, “Obviously, I want to be in the NHL … that’s where I want to be. I know I’m an NHL player.”
However, right now Jost is not because he had been struggling in his second season with the Sabres with two goals, two assists and a minus-8 plus/minus rating. In his last three games he was twice a healthy scratch and played just 6:53 in the other and with Zemgus Girgensons returning from injured reserve, Jost got squeezed off the roster.
The same thing happened to defenseman Jacob Bryson about a week earlier as the Sabres needed a roster spot with forward Jack Quinn returning, and with Bryson having dressed in only three games, he was waived. Like Jost, when he cleared waivers, he was reassigned to Rochester.
Jost made his presence felt immediately as he scored a goal in each of his first two games against Hershey and Utica and Appert said he can really make a difference for as long as he’s in Rochester. He played on a line with Mersch and Brett Murray and that makes for as good a grinder line as there is in the AHL.
“As much as it’s disappointing to be in the American League for a guy like him, it can be very good for his career,” Appert said. “It’s not good to sit, it’s not good to just be a 12th, 13th, 14th forward, so for him to get to play 18-20 minutes a night, be on special teams is great for him.
“And for us, a lot of teams have a guy like that. We’ve been built young with prospects over the last three years and you haven’t really had a guy like that. To have a guy with NHL presence and pedigree and that kind of confidence and swagger, especially in the middle of the ice at center, is a real boost for us.”
Jost agreed with Appert’s point about playing a regular shift because his time had been dwindling in Buffalo over the last month.
“It’s just nice to play hockey again,” he said. “It’s just a different game when you’re getting a regular shift and have rhythm and whatnot. It was tough for me there. I think I lost a little bit of my childhood love for the game, I guess you could say, when you’re just going through a tough stretch and the team wasn’t doing too good. So that’s tough, you never want to see that. The reason I play this game is because I love it and obviously it’s nice to go out there and play hockey for sure.”
Amerks lineup notes
▶ F Isak Rosen: Since his four-game stint with the Sabres in early December, Rosen has struggled to regain his scoring touch. In his first 16 games in Rochester Rosen had eight goals and 10 assists which earned him the chance to play in Buffalo as an injury replacement. Since coming back to Rochester he has just four assists in eight games, and that mini-slump pre-dates the loss of his high-scoring linemate, Jiri Kulich, who is away from the team playing in the World Juniors.
“Rosen and Kulich have a lot of chemistry so you don’t have that right now, so that hurts a little bit, but he’s a good enough player to push through that,” Appert said. “He hasn’t been as good since coming back from Buffalo. I thought he did a lot of good things (against Hershey). I thought he started to look more like himself, was a little more dangerous in his mindset and his demeanor and the way he attacked the game.”
▶ F Lukas Rousek: The opposite of Rosen lately has been Rousek who is on a six-game point streak and his 19 points trail only Kulich (22) and Rosen (22).
“His eight-, nine-game run right now has been just excellent,” Appert said. “How hard he’s playing off the puck, how hard he’s hunting the puck. He’s a really talented player and he sees the ice well, he’s creative, he’s a great passer. But I think the things that we’ve been challenging him on is that we need him to not be the smartest player on the team every day, he needs to be the most competitive player on the team every day.”
▶ D Jacob Bryson: He wasn’t playing at all in Buffalo but with the Amerks he’s getting full-time minutes and as a fast-skating, puck-moving defenseman, he can help the Amerks generate offense which clearly has been lacking recently.
“When you’re not scoring enough, you need secondary contributions, so we need Bryson, (Kyle) Clague, (Jeremy) Davies, guys like that,” Appert said of the defensive corps.
Rochester Americans schedule: What's coming up this week
Appert should be back in Rochester this weekend when the Amerks have a big two-game home-and-home set with Cleveland, the North Division leader who Rochester trails by 12 points.
The Monsters go into their game at Toronto Wednesday night with a 21-8-1 record and their 43 points leas second-place Syracuse (36). They rank fourth in the AHL in goals scored with 103, RW Trey Fix-Wolansky is their leading scorer with 29 points, and RW Carson Meyer leads with 13 goals. Their top goaltender, Jet Greaves, is 15-3-1 with a 2.76 goals-against and a .912 save percentage.
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 twice a week during the season, please follow this link: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Rochester Americans: Injuries pile up as team slumps
