By CRAIG POTTER
Rochester falls to the Senators as Utica wins a shootout to take over 3rd place.
ROCHESTER, N.Y. – The Rochester Americans fell out of third place in the North Division of the American Hockey League on Friday night following a 5-1 loss to the Belleville Senators before 5,808 fans at the Blue Cross Arena.
The Amerks and Utica Comets each have 85 points, but the Comets own the tie-breaker with a 37-24-7-4 record to the Amerks 34-21-11-6 mark. Utica also won the season series from Rochester. Both teams have 4 games left in the regular season.
However, the top two spots in the division were solidified Friday night with the Toronto Marlies securing the division title despite a shootout loss to Utica.
And the Syracuse Crunch secured second place, despite a shootout loss to the Binghamton Devils.
The Marlies are the Amerks opponents Saturday at 7:05 pm at the BCA, which could be a prelude to the opening round matchup in the upcoming Calder Cup playoffs.
Rochester took a 1-0 lead on Bellville when Colin Blackwell scored his 15th goal of the season on a power play off assists from Danny O’Regan and Nathan Paetsch.
“It was a weird game,” said Paetsch. “I thought we had a good first period, but in the second for some reason we came out a little flat. We made some costly errors and they capitalized on them. After that we were chasing the game from that point on.
“It wasn’t like a terrible hockey game. It was just little, silly things. We had some critical errors and then we started chasing the game.”
But in the second period, the Senators beat rookie goalie Jonas Johansson 4 times to take control of the game.
“It was disappointing,” said Amerks head coach Chris Taylor. “I think we took some not so good penalties and they capitalized on it. I think, at times, we were slow and methodical and did not get our shots off quick. They were able to block too many of our shots and they scored some timely goals.”
The first Senators goal came on a short-handed tally.
Seth Griffith fumbled the puck at the right point and gave it right to David Dziurzynski. One pass later, Parker Kelly scored on a breakaway just 46 seconds into the period.
“It can’t happen,” said Blackwell. “It’s any team, any day, any period. We have to win our shifts, whether it’s two minutes left in the period or the first two minutes of a period.
“I think the story of the game was they outworked us. Stuff like that is unacceptable. We have to learn from it and move on. It doesn’t matter if it’s the first two minutes of the game or the last two minutes of a game, we have to win our shift.”
The Amerks had plenty of chances, but Belleville netminder Marcus Hogberg played well in turning aside 32 shots in the contest.
“There were times I thought we should have shot and we passed,” Taylor said. “There were times we should have passed and we shot.”
Rochester rookie goalie Jason Kasdorf saw his first action of the season in the third period. He stopped 9 of 10 shots.
*NOTES – For the time in NHL and AHL history, probably, a player got checked into the glass, and could not free himself. It happened in the first period when Belleville defenseman Andreas Englund was checked into the glass in the right corner of the Senators zone. As the play moved on Englund, however, did not. His shoulder was pinned between 2 panes of the plexiglass. Play was halted as a linesman skated over to free him. No one had ever seen that happen before in a NHL or AHL game from media to players and coaches, so we believe it is a first in pro hockey history since plexiglass was introduced at the rinks.
Links
Rochester Americans – amerks.com
Videos
Colin Blackwell pp goal – https://youtu.be/SqK2b6k0jn0