Sabers prospects miss out on major opportunity with Amerks

The ice was already covered and workers were setting up the arena floor for its next event. The hockey season was over. Sooner than you thought, he would be here.

Maybe the Rochester Amerks wouldn’t have won the Calder Cup this year. Defending champion Hershey once again looks like the class of the Eastern Conference, and Cleveland would have been a tough foe in the AHL North Division final.

But it would have meant a lot to this group to have this chance against one or both teams. And for the Buffalo Sabers to give their prospects more teachable moments and more career memories to draw on.

Gone is the chance to see more heroics from Devon Levi and give names like Jiri Kulich, Isak Rosen, Lukas Rousek, Anton Wahlberg and Nikita Novikov more of a sense of what the playoffs entail.

Rochester in June is great, as we learned last year. Too bad we won’t see it in 2024.

“Right now, it doesn’t feel real to me,” Amerks captain Michael Mersch said after Rochester’s 5-2 loss to the Syracuse Crunch in the deciding Game 5 of the North semifinal.

Indeed, the Amerks were riding the wave of their Houdini act at the end of Game 4 that had produced an overtime victory at Syracuse six days earlier. They just couldn’t capitalize on those good feelings.

In the end, it was a 50-50 series that didn’t go the Americans’ way, unlike the five wins over the last two years against Utica and Syracuse, where the deciding game was won on the road each time. It was the Amerks’ first final game at home as a Sabers affiliate since their victory over Albany in 2000, and it was a dud.

Rochester and Syracuse, Tampa Bay’s affiliate, have now met 34 times over the past two seasons, 12 in each regular schedule and five more in the postseason. Too bad this round doesn’t have seven matches.

“I think we and Syracuse are both capable of making deep runs. It just happens that the North Division is so tough that you have to compete early,” said Amerks coach Seth Appert, who could now be in the running to join Lindy Ruff on the Buffalo bench. “You see it sometimes in the NHL too. Dallas and Vegas played (in the first round). They’re Cup teams (Stanley) and someone has to lose.”

Levi has been spectacular at times in this series, and Novikov, the tall Russian defender, is one of the revelations of Rochester’s season and was uncompromising again on Friday. But other Sabers-themed kids struggled at times in this game. Kulich was minus-4, Rosen and Tyson Kozak were minus-3 and Ryan Johnson was minus-2.

Kulich, who fed Mersch for Rochester’s second goal, did not score in the series after leading the team with 27 goals in the regular season. It was a bit like watching Jack Quinn struggle aimlessly two years ago against Laval, and Quinn took plenty of lessons from that series for his role with the Sabres.

The Amerks were in a 2-0 hole less than 10 minutes into the game, and it took 10 1/2 minutes to get their first shot on goal. They seemed slow. Was the moment – ​​Game 5, in front of a packed house of 10,758 – initially too big?

“It’s funny, I didn’t feel that way at all this week, or today,” Appert said. “I just thought we were playing a little hyper, a little too excited. Some decisions with the puck, some execution. And that definitely hurts.”

To use the old basketball adage, they didn’t get a good whistle either, and Appert, his players and the fans were apt to be evenly matched in parts of it. Syracuse’s second goal looked like goaltender interference, and top-pairing defenseman Jeremy Davies was knocked out of the game in the second period on a hit that was at least interference, and could have been even more so .

(This may be easy to forget, but there are many reasons why certain officials are also present in the minor leagues.)

The place was packed – and they were standing a little further out on the party terrace at one end of the rink – but the crowd never really got to assert any real influence on the game. Syracuse’s early lead and throttling of the neutral zone in the third period ensured that.

Levi couldn’t do much on any of the goals. There were a few deflections from his own players and a pair of one-off 2-on-1s after some great passes. Subsequently, the defeat was clearly very hard. Levi is an optimistic guy, an energetic goalie who is always looking to stop the next puck.

But his trademark smile was gone. The next plan won’t happen until September now. In the Sabres’ grand plan, Levi will no longer play here.

“I didn’t think it would be this fun,” Levi said of his AHL experience. “It was one of the most fun teams I’ve ever played for. It was just an amazing chapter. I came in with a more professional mindset, like come in, do my job, focus solely on my play and giving the team the best chance But I think it’s become more than that… Everyone here is a great teammate and we will be for the rest of our lives.

No more game tapes to watch, no more practices, no more hockey for this venerable franchise in its cool old barn until the fall. What a pity.

A dejected Appert said, “I would love to win a Calder Cup. But probably more importantly, I just wish I could take them to practice next week.”