By CRAIG POTTER
Rochester suffers its first defeat of the season as the Comets win their first, 2-0.
ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Maybe it was Friday the 13th, or just riding their laurels of a 2-0 sweep last weekend against the Syracuse Crunch, but whatever the reason, the Rochester Americans were not prepared to play Friday night before 3,374 fans at the Blue Cross Arena.
“We were not ready from the start,” said Amerks team captain Kevin Porter. “The rest of the leadership group and I will take full responsibility for that. Giving Utica credit, they came out hard and out-worked us during the first five minutes and we could not dig ourselves out of it.”
Amerks goalie went to handle the puck behind the net in the opening minute of play on a pass to defenseman Taylor Fedun. However, Reid Boucher stole the puck, passed it to Nikolay Goldobin, who fired it into the Rochester goal just 46 seconds into the game.
The Comets went on to dominate the first period as they outshot the Amerks, 13-8.
Rochester had its best period in the second as the Amerks took 19 shots on Utica netminder Thatcher Demko, 7 shots by Nick Baptiste, but the Comets goalie stopped them all.
“We were better during the second period but in this league when you get down a pair of goals it is hard to come back,” Baptiste said. “We have two wins out of the first three games but need to continue to improve our game, and with a week before our next game, we will certainly do that.”
His teammates helped him out by scoring on a blast by Michael Carcone at the top of the left circle that beat Amerks keeper Linus Ullmark high as he went to his knees.
The Comets outplayed the Amerks in the third stanza as Demko finished with 33 saves for the shutout, and received the No. 1 Star of the Game honors.
The Amerks will have a full week to ponder their effort and work to make sure it does not happen again as they do not play until next Friday at 7:05 pm at the BCA against the Charlotte Checkers.
“That’s what we talked about before the game,” Taylor said. “Now we have a week. That was up to them.
“It’s going to be a hard week. We’ve got to change what we do; our habits, turning away from pucks, not getting to the net, boxing out, being stronger going to the net. We’ve got to fix all those problems. It’s not going to happen in another week, but we’re certainly going to improve on it.”
*NOTES — The Amerks announced a change to their 2017-18 American Hockey League schedule. Rochester’s game scheduled for Saturday, March 17 against the Bridgeport Sound Tigers at Webster Bank Arena will now be played on Thursday, March 15. The original 7 pm start time will remain the same.