Courtesy of Amerks.com
Providence, RI – The Rochester Americans (23-11-3-1) could not find a way to solve the Providence Bruins (21-13-3-1), falling on the wrong side of a 3-0 score Friday night at Amica Mutual Pavilion.
Despite suffering just their sixth regulation loss on the road this season, the Amerks have won 15 of their last 21 contests while earning at least one point in 26 of their last 35 games dating back to Oct. 23. The contest was the 19th in the last 15 years between two clubs.
Zachary Metsa (5) and Jack Rathbone (4) combined for nine of Rochester’s 29 shots while Isak Rosén led the forwards with three.
Goaltender Devon Levi (12-4-2) took the defeat in the crease for just the fourth time in regulation through his first 18 appearances with the Amerks. The Quebec native, who finished 26 saves, turned aside his first 19 shots through the first 38 minutes of play. Additionally, dating back to the Jan. 11 loss in Syracuse, it marked the first time in Levi’s AHL career he has taken a regulation loss in back-to-back appearances as he owns a 15-4-2 record in 21 starts outside the Flower City.
FIRST PERIOD
Rochester drew the game’s first two penalties, the first of which occurred just 48 seconds into the opening stanza, but the team was unable to capitalize on the man-advantage while Providence was also unsuccessful on its initial power-play.
Levi made a pair of grade-A saves, including denying Georgii Merkulov after he stepped out of the penalty box, among his 12 stops to keep the contest scoreless after the first period. At the other end of the ice, Providence’s Michael DiPietro also stopped all 13 shots he faced in the opening frame.
SECOND PERIOD
In reverse fashion, the Bruins drew a pair of infractions as opposed to the Amerks one, but again neither team found any luck on its man-advantage in the middle period. Rochester’s shorthanded unit held the Bruins’ power-play off the scoreboard for all four minutes of Jagger Joshua’s double-minor as well as a cross-checking penalty later in the stanza.
As the game appeared to remain scoreless for the second straight period, Providence finally broke through with the game’s first goal in the closing minutes.
Racing to track down a wide shot from exiting the offensive zone, Tyler Pitlick grabbed the puck along the wall near the right face-off dot. The veteran forward snapped a pass to the left point to Merkulov, who immediately charged the net from the left side of Levi. After successfully pulling the Amerks goaltender out of position by carrying the puck low, he sent a return pass to Pitlick to flip into the open net with 1:38 remaining in the frame.
THIRD PERIOD
Building off the momentum from the late second-period goal, Providence doubled its lead early in the final frame.
After forcing Rochester into an icing violation, Merkulov won the draw inside the left dot of Levi. The Bruins’ leading assist-getter controlled the face-off before Fabian Lysell wired a shot past the blocker to extend the advantage.
Facing a 2-0 deficit with just over three minutes to play and looking to spoil Providence’s bid for a third consecutive shutout, Levi was summoned to the bench for an extra attacker. The plan was quickly extinguished as Lysell corralled a loose puck at center ice before he scored into the yawning net at the 16:54 mark.
Rochester tried for one final push after the goal to avoid being shutout for the third time this season, but the Amerks were unable to get by DiPietro, who stopped his last 55 shots and has a 9-1-1 mark since Dec. 7.
UP NEXT
The Amerks close out their four-game trek through the Atlantic Division at XL Center on Saturday, Jan. 25 when they take on the Hartford Wolf Pack at 6:00 p.m. The matchup will be the second and final meeting between the two teams this season and will be carried live on The Sports Leader 95.7 FM/950 AM The Fan Rochester as well as AHLTV on FloHockey.
I know its a broken record, but when the team is currently trending in the wrong direction, it is totally meaningless dragging out meaningless stats about how many points they have earned over the past several games, weeks, months. If its an attempt of being ‘positive’, well its just disingenuous.
At the moment, they have lost 4 of 5. The focus needs to be on how to stop that, not how many points they have earned dating back to the opening month of the season. What possible relevance is there to that?
Levi cost the Amerks the first goal and for the 2nd time during this slump, his being way out of the crease cost his team a goal. To be fair, since the Amerks didn’t score at all, he would have lost had he allowed 1 goal on 50 shots. It wasn’t a solid effort and they will need a solid team effort against Hartford to avoid a 4th straight road loss.
Our division is tight. When you lose, you lose ground fast. Suddenly we are 3 behind Laval, 1 behind Cleveland and only 3 ahead of Toronto, with them having 3 in hand. Amerks don’t want to finish 4th and face the best of 3 opening round.
In the recent 4 losses, two of them were terrible–last night and the 6-2 wipeout by Syracuse. The SO loss to Lehigh should have been a win on many levels. That was one goofy game. The 1 goal loss to Hershey was due to bad goaltending by a guy who hadn;t played in this league in 2 months.
The one win came with a goalie who many have been super critical of this season, Sandstrom…playing extremely well and who has actually won his last 4 decisions. Go figure.
Sabres now must stop jerking Levi up and down. None of it is in the least helping the young man learn his trade. He was not sharp in his start out west and all the travel, physically and emotionally hasn’t helped him very much either. Sabres can’t help themselves. They will spin it to make us believe it was necessary. We know better, based on their history of ruining prospects.
We head into the final 2 1/2 months. We need a strong Levi to lead the way. We need a solid power play. And we need our ‘top 6’ to be performing like the team leaders. So go out there Amerks, and start winning again.