Rochester squanders its lead, and maybe its playoff chances.
By Kevin Oklobzia / Pickinsplinters.com
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — From the perfect scenario to the worst scenario, all in matter of one evening.
The Rochester Americans opened a 2-0 lead in the first period, then gave up three unanswered goals in a span of just 2 minutes and 51 seconds and ended up 4-2 losers to the Cleveland Monsters on Saturday.
So now, with just two games remaining after Saturday’s crushing loss to the last-place Monsters, the Amerks find themselves in serious need of help from rivals in the American Hockey League’s North Division.
By losing, the Amerks fell back below the Calder Cup playoff cut line. They have a points-earned percentage of .554 while the idle Toronto Marlies – who have four games remaining – are fifth at .559.
Games in hand aren’t necessarily a good thing this season, where the points-earned percentage and not traditional points in the standings determine playoff seeding because not all teams are playing an equal number of games.
Lose and you can fall out of the playoffs, just as the Amerks did on Saturday. As it stands now, the best percentage the Amerks can earn is .566, and that’s by winning tomorrow’s 3 p.m. rematch at Cleveland at Friday night’s regular season finale on home ice against Utica.
Thus, they need help.
“I don’t like the teams in our division, so I hate having to cheer for someone else,” defenseman Jimmy Schuldt said.
Losing a game that you should win creates such a scenario, however, especially when all looked so promising just over 10 minutes into the game. First-year AHLer Lukas Rousek scored his first North American goal at just 2:40 into the game (in his 17th game) and Brandon Biro pushed the lead to 2-0 at 10:12 with his 11th goal.
But a hooking penalty by Ryan MacInnis at 19:12 of the first period gave the no-life Monsters a power play, and they needed just 29 seconds to score.
“We had a poor goalie exchange between Upie (Ukka-Pekka Luukkonen) and the D and then it’s a free goal,” Amerks coach Seth Appert said. “We gave them momentum, we gave them life.”
The Monsters then scored twice on fastbreaks just 16 seconds apart in the third minute of the second period and suddenly the Amerks trailed 3-2.
From that point on, the Amerks produced more than enough great scoring chances. Jack Quinn, Rousek and Mark Jankowski all had breakaways in the second period. None of them could score.
“We didn’t really even test the goalie on those three,” Appert said. “Quinner elected not to shoot, Rousek probably had six moves and didn’t get a shot off and then Janko shot high. Those are hard opportunities to earn to not capitalize on.”
The great chances continued in the third period, but the only goal was scored by Cleveland’s Roman Ahcan, shooting a bullseye into an empty net 115 feet away with 1:33 remaining to clinch victory for the Monsters.
“We created tons of chances but we’re struggling to finish,” Appert said. “We had three breakaways in the second period, we had a two-on-one in the second period, we created power-play looks, we had pucks laying around the crease.
“I don’t know if we’re grippng the stick a little tight. We created plenty to score four or five tonight, we just didn’t capitalize.”
So now the Amerks find themselves in dire straits. It’s bad enough this franchise hasn’t won a playoff series since 2005 and now might miss the playoffs despite the largest assembly of young talent since that same 2004-05 season.
With four games in this penultimate week of the regular season, the Amerks have gone just 1-1-1-0 so far.
“Coming into this week, we had five games left, I figured 4-1 probably gets us in and 3-1-1 probably gives us a really good chance,” Appert said. “All we can do now is control what we can control. What we can control is how we prepare tomorrow. That’s it, so we have to control that.”
The first-period power-play goal for Cleveland turned Saturday’s game around, as not-great third-period penalties continue to haunt the Amerks this month.
On April 13, Biro’s high-sticking penalty at 9:22 led to the tying goal by Laval 49 seconds later, though the Amerks did win in overtime.
On April 15, MacInnis took a slashing penalty 32 seconds into the third and Belleville score 30 seconds later to take a 2-0 lead. The Senators held on to win 2-1.
The next night, Mark Alt’s boarding penalty at 11:54 led to a power-play goal for Hartford with 7:01 remaining, but the Amerks held on to win 2-1.