The Rochester Americans lost on another episode of Frustrating Fridays, this time by the final score of 5-2 against the Hamilton Bulldogs. A lot can be said about this game, very little would be good.
Cedrick Desjardins was great. The Hamilton defense was great. The Amerks defense failed again. The Amerks special teams failed again. Tyler Plante allowed four goals but I don’t think he was “bad.”
“Even though they’re missing players they’re still a good team,” Benoit Groulx said about the Hamilton Bulldogs.
A moment later Groulx went on to say, “We have not played with our full roster for two months.”
Are you kidding me? I was speechless when he said this. But there’s more.
He went on to say, “I think the day we’ll have Repik back, Garrison healthy, everybody healthy, Matthias back we’ll have a much better roster. At the beginning of the year we had everybody and the team was playing well but we havn’t had that chance and I think its going to take a certain period of time.”
It sounds like the month of January was a complete waste. Nothing was accomplished after the month of December as the call ups slowed down.
“Today we played against Hamilton,” Groulx said. “Everything they do they do it well, they made us look bad tonight for two periods and then we started to play.”
Chris Taylor says it’s frustrating. I asked him if it’s time to start looking forward to the end of the season and he said no, there’s still 30 games left. Rory Fitzpatrick said it’s frustrating as well but to look at the record of the past 10 games.
The Amerks will rebound and play well against the Binghamton Senators on Saturday and probably win, against a team that they should beat. Something is gone from the team and the locker room. How come teams can be down two goals against the Amerks but find a way to still play hard but this team says, “the other team took control and we could not do anything.”
i am sick and tired of the garbage excuses coming from this locker room. yeah hamiltons playing well, so what! amerks have injuries and call ups, what makes us so special? wilkes-barre has seen just as many callups as rochester and they’re only 4 pts out of a playoff spot!
heres a novel concept: instead of seeing injuries and callups as a reason to go half-speed, maybe some of these young players and veterans eligible for the NHL should see it as an opportunity to step it up a notch.
maybe instead of trying to make the pretty-sparkly-tick-tack-toe plays how about rolling up their jersey sleves, get in those corners and win the 50-50 battles for the puck down low, get it to the point, position somebody in the warzone in front of the goaltender while the point man tosses a WRIST SHOT [not a slap shot] at said goal, god forbid theres a rebound or deflection?
Callups arent an entitlement, they’re earned. Except for Duco, McArdle, Dadanov, Orestovich, and Salak nobody has earned that opportunity.
The “company line” that seems to be coming from the team is gross, the coach and the players. I wish I could write about things that would make people want to go to the game but there has not been anything.