By KEVIN OKLOBZIJA
In their biggest game yet this season, with a chance to solidify playoff positioning and doom the post-season hopes for the Belleville Senators, the Rochester Americans failed the test.
The Senators used an early penalty-shot goal by Viktor Lodin and an early third-period power-play goal by Egor Sokolov to build a 2-0 lead and defeat the Amerks 2-1 on Friday night at Blue Cross Arena at the War Memorial.
So now it’s the Amerks whose playoff lives are very much at stake – three weeks before the Calder Cup playoffs even begin.
The Amerks (34-27-6-3) are back below the cut line with a .550 points-earned percentage. Belleville leap-frogged Rochester and is back in fifth (.561). Both have six games remaining, with the Amerks back on home ice Saturday night against Hartford.
Syracuse is third at .572 and Toronto fourth at .569. Both have seven games to play, which may not necessarily be to their advantage since playoff spots are based on the points-earned percentage and not points in the standing since teams don’t play the same number of games.
If the Amerks fail to get in, they can look at the season series with Belleville as one big reason why. They went 3-3-1-1 against the Senators (a percentage of .500) while Belleville went 5-2-1 and earned 11 of a possible 16 points (.688).
The Senators prevailed on Friday largely because of their usual nasty, defend-the-house style in their own zone. The play in front of the net was a trip back in time and the Amerks often lost the battle for positioning.
“I think we struggled getting inside,” said Amerks winger Jack Quinn, who didn’t figure in Brandon Biro’s third-period power-play goal and had just one shot on goal.
The Senators made it a priority – as always – to play with a high degree of physicality. The Amerks didn’t cope well early but did adjust as the game went on, though they could manage just the one goal.
“They’re a big, heavy, mean team,” Amerks coach Seth Appert said. “When you have a team that plays as over-aggressive as they do, you do need to capitalize in transition, and you need to capitalize when they take as many penalties as they did.”
On Friday the Amerks didn’t do so. Their power play was just 1-for-7 and, when they did ramp up the offensive attack in the third period against a more passive, protect-the-lead Senators team, they still couldn’t score.
Arttu Ruotsalainen was alone at the right edge of the crease with 2:50 to play but goalie Filip Gustavsson blocked the shot.
Michael Mersch was ready to slam home the tying goal with 34 seconds remaining, going down to his patented shoot-from-a-knee position as Mark Jankowski made the pass from the right circle toward the slot.
Except the puck never arrived. Defenseman Dillon Heatherington dropped into a slide a blocked the pass.
“He made a good play at the right time,” Mersch said.
The Amerks didn’t make enough good plays. Their goalie, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, bailed them out with a terrific first period, when the Senators had two breakaways and four two-on-one fastbreaks.
“They got behind us, they got through us too much, and Upie was very good and allowed us to get our feet under us,” Appert said.
One of those breakaways, by Lodin, led to the penalty shot as he was slashed meekly by defenseman Ethan Prow.
“I thought it was a penalty, not a penalty shot,” Appert said. “We’ve had eight (similar plays) that were more likely to be called with the same officials at some point this year.”
Lodin is a fourth-round pick of Ottawa from 2019 who just signed a contract this month after playing the season in Sweden. He got Luukkonen to bite on a fake and then did a little dangling with the puck to score.
“He kind of got me with the shot fake of whatever you want to call it,” Luukkonen said. “Early in a game, you tend to want to make a save too much but in the end it was a solid move by the shooter.”
Lodin rose to the occasion. Not enough Amerks did as the game went on. It’s the big-game showdowns where teams need the top guns to step up. Only Biro scored on Friday. JJ Peterka and Ruotsalainen were dangerous at times, but more was needed from others, including Quinn.
“I try not to look at one game as production or not,” Appert said. “Jack is our top player, he’s a go-to guy. He knows that, and he has produced this year far more than he hasn’t produced, so I don’t want to judge that on one game.”
Quinn did judge himself critically, one of his many positive traits.
“I didn’t think I had my best tonight,” he said. “It’s frustrating for the team that we lost but it’s frustrating for myself that I couldn’t help the team.”
That’s perhaps a good sign. He usually responds in a big way. Like in mid-January, when his play was sub-standard in a 4-3 shootout loss on Jan. 14 and he came back the next night and scored four goals.
“He holds himself to a real high standard,” Appert said. “He’s extremely competitive and that’s why we have such belief in him.”
Coach always makes excuses for this team. Bottom line it’s been several weeks since they have had a full lineup and no improvement, actually slightly worse even. Too talented to not be in the playoffs. Hope all you reporters will ask him tougher questions the team preparation in the first period was atrocious for what was said to be the biggest game in the past 3 years.
Agreed. Coach defends his team and talks often like they didn’t lose. It was a huge loss and needed to be dealt with as such. On this night UPL was good. The penalty shot call was atrocious. No way it was even CLOSE to a penalty shot. Have no clue what the ref was thinking. Still it was early and Amerks failed to show up in the first period. 1-7 on the powerless play didn’t help.
Coach says he doesn’t like to over- emphasize each game. He needed to last night which makes me wonder if he really has this team prepared to play the ‘big ones’ when they appear. After beating these guys soundly less than a week ago, there was no reason for their lack lustre performance. Belleville clearly adjusted and Amerks had no answer at all. Coach can say what he wants but from a fans standpoint, it was a terrible effort. This team cannot sustain any momentum at all. They often look like they are not prepared to compete.
Playoffs may well be out of reach. Where is the fire? The desperation? I see and hear none of it from Appert, which is clearly disappointing. I believe he is coddling the young players too much. You have to make losing very uncomfortable in a playoff chase. Thats not happening.
I think they are toast.