Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
The math hardly looked too favorable a month ago.
But fighting for a North Division title is right where the Rochester Americans expected to be.
Rochester is a team, after all, that went to the Eastern Conference Finals last season, and had returned enough of that talent to be considered a solid contender this go-round.
Inside the Amerks dressing room is a standings board. Four weeks ago, on the morning of Mar. 10, that board showed Rochester just two points above the division playoff line. Laval and Utica were right behind them, threatening to knock the Amerks out of the top-five.
First place? That was 12 points off in the distance, a fight to be waged between Cleveland and Syracuse.
For a large portion of its schedule, Rochester played .500 hockey. The first four games of March had been win-loss-win-loss, like many stretches of this season. Finishing up a three-in-three weekend on Mar. 10, though, the Amerks secured a 3-2 home win against Utica.
They have barely slowed down since.
Last night’s 3-2 overtime victory in Providence has the Amerks firmly in the chase for their first division title since 2004-05. With a 9-1-0-1 record in their last 11 games, Rochester enters this afternoon’s visit to Bridgeport just three points behind first-place Syracuse and one back of second-place Cleveland.
The win over the Bruins saw contributions from both the future of the Buffalo Sabres as well as the rock-solid veterans in Rochester that anchor head coach Seth Appert’s roster. Forward Anton Wahlberg, just over from Malmo of the Swedish Hockey League at age 18, recorded his first AHL goal. Devon Levi handled 33 of 35 shots from the potent P-Bruins, a team that came into the game tied for third in the AHL in scoring.
But it was also a tried-and-true Amerk, captain Michael Mersch, who won the game with a power-play conversion 46 seconds into overtime, the 400th point of his professional career.
Taking a peek at that standings board is much easier right now even if Appert stresses that getting caught up in scoreboard-watching is not something that he or his players do. He figures that the team has been fighting going back to mid-February.
“Listen,” Appert said after the Amerks’ 6-1 win over Cleveland on Wednesday. “I’m a human being. Do I know what the standings are? Yes. Do the guys? Of course. We’re not focused on it. We’re not talking about it.
“We’ve played really good by focusing on what we can control and not being worried about the standings. Now that we’re close to some other teams, and people are saying we can do this or that, now is not the time to start worrying about the standings. If our process is good in practice, in our daily reps, in our habits, and we play the right way and give ourselves a chance to win, I believe good things will follow when the season’s over. But we’ve got a lot of work to do ahead of us.”
In those post-game comments, Appert lauded several details of his team’s performance. They had hunted pucks. They had complicated former teammate Malcolm Subban’s task with excellent screen work. They had matched and responded to Cleveland’s physical play. It was a playoff-style performance, something that they had displayed plenty of last spring.
There were more than a few false starts to reach this point, though. Plenty of hits to the roster, be they call-ups to Buffalo or injuries. Through the first quarter of their season, Rochester had allowed 4.11 goals per game, second-worst in the league. In the 48 contests since then, they’re holding opponents to 3.06 goals per game.
“We had some good, hard meetings early in the season when we were winning only by offense,” Appert detailed. “It takes time to build the mentality that you’re playing for each other, not just with each other. Teams that play for each other block shots, take hits to make plays, stick up for each other, fight for each other. Teams that just play with each other just rely on their skill to try to win. We’ve just been on a slow, steady march toward being better at those things.
“We’re not good enough yet. We’re not a finished product. But we’re a lot further ahead than we were in November and December.”
The early returns on Abbotsford Canucks forward Jonathan Lekkerimäki are encouraging.
Lekkerimäki, who doesn’t turn 20 until July, joined Abbotsford after completing his Swedish Hockey League season with Orebro. Already a subject of considerable focus for Vancouver fans after the organization took him 15th overall in the 2022 NHL Draft, a standout SHL season had only increased that enthusiasm. His 19 goals and 31 points in 46 games led all junior-aged SHL players, and representing Sweden at the IIHF World Junior Championship, he tied for third in tournament scoring with 10 points (seven goals, three assists) in seven games to lead the team to a silver medal and win tournament most valuable player honors.
For both Canucks management and fans, this is a late-season opportunity to see Lekkerimäki up close facing AHL competition. And they have to like what they see, especially when Lekkerimäki’s strong play was rewarded with a third-period goal in last night’s 2-1 overtime loss against Coachella Valley. Lekkerimäki snuck a shot through traffic that deflected off a Firebirds defender and past Chris Driedger early in the third period. In the final five minutes of play, Lekkerimäki nearly had his second goal, hitting the pipe.
Abbotsford’s five-game winning streak ended, but the point still lifted the Canucks to fifth place in the Pacific Division. The team has already clinched a playoff berth.
In Hershey, the saying goes, they only hang banners for Calder Cup championships.
And it’s true. Look at the banners high above the Giant Center ice, and they only commemorate the 12 Calder Cup titles that the franchise has won in its 86 seasons. The most recent banner went up in October to celebrate the title that they won in a wild seven-game final against Coachella Valley last season.
That said, this has been a special regular season for the Bears, and they could be on their way to adding another piece of lore to the history book. If they can earn at least seven points over their final five games, the Bears (50-12-0-5, .784) would establish a new AHL mark for the best record in a single season. The 1992-93 Binghamton Rangers, a club that featured future NHL stars Sergei Zubov and Alexei Kovalev, a future AHL Hall of Famer in Don Biggs and a rookie phenom in Corey Hirsch, went 57-13-10 (.775) to set the record that has stood for 31 years.
After this weekend’s two-game sweep in Iowa, the Bears are off until Friday when they host Lehigh Valley, followed by a home-and-home series with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton to wrap up a three-in-three. A pair of home games against Charlotte completes the regular season Apr. 17 and 20.
On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.
