Given the fight they had to endure over the last few weeks just to make it to the Calder Cup playoffs should bode well for the Rochester Americans as they open their best-of-three series in Toronto against the Marlies Wednesday night.
That’s the belief of coach Michael Leone who saw the Amerks stop what would have been a tremendously gut-wrenching collapse by earning a point Sunday in their regular season-ending 5-4 overtime loss at Hershey which clinched the team’s fifth consecutive postseason berth.
“When we go into Game 1, I don’t think there will be any nerves because we basically played a Game 7 and the emotion that went into that game will prepare us for what’s next,” Leone said Tuesday before the team bused up to Toronto where they will begin the series with a 7:05 faceoff.
The Amerks entered the final week with a six-point lead on Utica for the fifth and final playoff berth in the North Division, but by Saturday night they had lost four games in a row, Utica had won three straight, and the teams were tied with 71 points.
Because Utica, which closed its schedule Saturday, owned the tiebreaker, Rochester needed to at least get its season finale against Hershey to overtime, and after falling behind 4-3 with 9:29 remaining in regulation, Carson Meyer scored a power-play goal with 7:15 to go and the Amerks were able to get to the final horn even. It mattered little that they eventually lost in overtime because they had gotten their playoff-clinching point.
The Amerks have avoided the dangerous play-in series each of the previous three years, but the last time they had to play in it, they swept Belleville 2-0 in 2022. This time they are playing a Toronto team that finished 10 points ahead of them, though they split their six-game regular-season series with every game won by the home team.
Not great considering the Amerks will get only one home game, at 7:05 on Friday night, and if a deciding Game 3 is necessary, it would be played at 4 p.m. Sunday in Toronto.
“We’re excited,” Leone said. “Our group faced a lot of adversity this year with call-ups, injuries; we had nine players on our roster that this was their first full season in the American League and I think this season really hardened our group. We played in pretty much a Game 7 the last game of the year and the guys showed a lot of emotion, a lot of character from the group to find a way to get in.”
As Leone said, it has been a challenging season because the Buffalo Sabres called up players like Tyson Kozak, Noah Ostlund, and Zach Metsa for lengthy stretches, and six weeks ago at the NHL trade deadline they dealt away the Amerks’ best goal scorer, Isak Rosen, as well as Viktor Neuchev which really created a void.
The Amerks lost seven of their 10 games in April, but Leone said none of that matters now because they qualified and they have given themselves a chance.
“The process of our game the last two months of the season has been really good, regardless of what our record says,” he said. “We’ve been playing really good hockey against really good teams. We’ve become a solid defensive team focusing on our net first. I think the guys are ready, the guys are excited. There’s probably a lot of people who aren’t picking us to win this series and that’s great. I believe in this group, this team. We’ve played a lot of really good hockey.”
Goalie Devon Levi, who had the biggest workload of his professional career as he played in 52 of the 72 games and saw his goals-against average rise to a career-worst 2.83, thinks the grit the Amerks showed in Hershey can carry forward against Toronto.
“It felt like we won that game when we got back to the locker room,” he said. “We got the point, it feels like we won. We earned our way in and that was kind of how we wanted to do it. It’s definitely a momentum builder for sure going into the playoffs. The best thing about the playoffs is it doesn’t matter what you’ve done beforehand, it’s a new season and may the best team win, so we’re looking forward to the battle.”
Sal Maiorana has covered the Buffalo Bills for more than four decades including 37 years as the full-time beat writer/columnist for the D&C. He has written numerous books about the history of the team, and he is also co-host of the BLEAV in Bills podcast/YouTube show. He can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com, and you can follow him on X @salmaiorana and on Bluesky @salmaiorana.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Battle-tested Amerks open Calder Cup playoffs in Toronto
Reporting by Sal Maiorana, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle / Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
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