By KEVIN OKLOBZIJA
From the perfect scenario to the worst scenario, all in a 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.
Lets just pour it out there. Yesterdays game was a disappointing debacle that exposed every single one of the Amerks fatal flaws second half of this season.
They would get early leads and never hold them. They would take ridiculous penalties at the worst possible times and those penalties usually cost them dearly. The goalies would give up soft goals in close games..yesterday UPL gave up two softies, the worst was the game winning goal where he just whiffed on a routine shot. He wasn’t prepared. That can’t happen. Continuing…they can’t clear their zone. Their power plays were alternately OK and miserable. Yesterday they had 4 chances to tie the game with power plays and they were a muddled mess of missed passes, poor choices, whiffed shots and complete disorganization.
Were they prepared to play yesterday? They sure didn’t look like they were ready to defeat a team that had won twice in 10 games. They were sloppy, tentative and for about 40 minutes, unwatchable. The fans were not into it and you could hear a scattering of boos at the end. Deserved. A few ‘lets go Amerks’ died quickly and didn’t ignite the team or the crowd.
What fans the Amerks had this season can debate whether our coach was up to the task. He had more talent than this organization has seen in quite awhile. Once most the ‘skill’ players returned, the team got worse. Hard to believe. Quinn has regressed a lot. Arttu has disappeared. JJ has been totally inconsistent. MacInnis has been flat out terrible. Up and down this lineup they have all disappointed, as a TEAM. I don’t believe they deserve to make post season and if they somehow pull that off, they won’t survive a best of 3.
You left the BCA shaking your head. The team was awful on home ice this year. They lost every game where they had a large crowd. Losing to Cleveland was a disgrace. This was a must win and the team went right into the dumper after taking a 2-0 lead.
To hear Buffalo coach Granato talk, he’s perfectly fine with this. Win or lose, his prospects got to compete. But did they though? And is that what fans of a team that hasn’t won a playoff series since 2005 wanted to hear (from a coach of a team that hasn’t won anything, ever?) While most the teams in our division have risen to the occasion, our team just isn’t good enough. They just have never corrected their flaws. Its wash, rinse, repeat with these guys. They perfected the formula for losing.
It was simply an awful show. They might be a great bunch of guys (and they probably are) but they are not a very good hockey team. And I believe that starts right at the top with the coaching staff. They seemed to justify losing and de-emphasize winning as part of the program.
As a fan, I can’t tolerate that.
This is team to me will go down as the most underachieving Amerks team in history if they don’t make the playoffs. If you listen to Appert Cleveland like every other team in the north division is like the Edmonton Oilers of the 1980s and I think his players have taken that to heart and play scared instead of aggressive when they have leads and consequently instead of getting 4 points have gotten just 1 of 4 having squandered leads 2 games in a row against teams who have nothing to play for. Amazingly, if the Amerks win the next 2 gamesthey can still make the playoffs if Toronto only gets 5 of its next possible 8 points or Belleville gets only 1 of its possible next 4 points both teams have to play each other twice and then Toronto has to play Laval twice so schedule favors the Amerks playing teams with nothing to play for logic says this all should play out in the Amerks favor yet my gut instinct says they will choke and if that happens I hope the Seth Appert experiment ends I think instead of coddling his young prospects need to play a little more desperate something tells me if Tortorella or Van Boxmeer was coaching these guys a playoff spot would have long ago been secured