By KEVIN OKLOBZIJA
When Rochester Americans coach Chris Taylor and his staff go through video of Friday night’s game, they will assign far more demerits than they will gold stars.
And yet, the Amerks still won, defeating the Toronto Marlies 5-4 by going a perfect 3-for-3 in the tiebreaker shootout.
That’s the best time for a coach not to like his team’s overall game.
“I’m happy with the win, obviously, but just not with how we finished or even how we started,” Taylor said after the Amerks ran their winning streak to five in front of 4,438 fans at Blue Cross Arena at the War Memorial.
“It’s nice that when you’re growing (as a team), you still come out with two points.”
The pure skill up in the lineup was the reason why. Danny O’Regan scored two goals and Alex Nylander and Brendan Guhle had the others as the Amerks opened 1-0, 3-1 and 4-2 leads but ended up in a shootout after 65 minutes.
And that’s where the puck skills were on display. Rookie winger Victor Olofsson started the shootout with a deke and backhand goal against Marlies goalie Jeff Glass. Sam Gagner then scored for the Marlies against Scott Wedgewood.
The Amerks second shooter, C.J. Smith veered his way to the net before wristing a shot off the cross bar and into the net, past the left arm and shoulder of Glass. Wedgewood denied Pierre Engvall, Toronto’s second shooter, with a blocker save.
And then Wayne Simpson ended it with another bar-down snipe past over the left shoulder.
“It’s certainly a bit of a relief to have that kind of thing in our back pocket,” defenseman Zach Redmond said of the shootout abilities. “There’s definitely a lot of skill in here.”
Said O’Regan: “There’s probably 10 other guys that could be jumping out to shoot next.”
Oddly, however, they work done in practice on shootouts hadn’t been inspiring much confidence.
“No one’s really scoring in practice shootouts,” Guhle said. “We must have been saving it for the game.”
That the Amerks ended up in the shootout — and gave the Marlies a point in the standings — was the part that didn’t sit well with Taylor. Gagner’s goal with just 10.2 seconds to play during an extra-attacker swarm forced overtime.
“That was a bit of a dagger late,” O’Regan said.
The Amerks were well aware they needed to be better down the stretch against the defending Calder Cup champions.
“This was a good test and to be honest, I didn’t think we were all that great,” Redmond said.
The Amerks nonetheless improved to 5-2. The two losses came on the opening weekend, both to the Charlotte Checkers, who are 5-0.
Pilut out with injury
Defenseman Lawrence Pilut was slated to play Friday night but was ruled out sometime between the morning skate and game time. Andrew MacWilliam took his place in the lineup.
Pilut suffered an upper body injury in Wednesday’s 6-1 in at Utica and is listed as day-to-day.
Taylor said Pilut wanted to play through it but that it made more sense to let him heal, especially with five extra defensemen on the roster.
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