Another day, another Expected Buffalo Faceoff. Eddy makes his debut in the series this time. The apprentices are taking a run at the master this week. Ok, I’m (Chad) not the master, but you know what I mean.

This faceoff is going to be about the Rochester Amerks. They’re likely going to miss the AHL playoffs baring some kind of collapse from the Toronto Marlies. The question here is simple. Was this season a failure for the Amerks or not?

Eddy will argue it was not and I’m going to argue that it was.

Eddy – Things Change!

(Each of the game totals is with one game remaining of course)

Somehow, someway, you’re going to boo me at some point of reading my side. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

This answer is a pros and cons list, not someone holding up a $1 and a $10 and asking me to take one. And it’s asking about success vs failure. Not if it’s good or bad that the Amerks missed the playoffs.

It stinks the Amerks are going to miss the playoffs. Even more so because I would’ve gone to the home playoff games! And in October I expected them to make the playoffs when I wrote this!

This feels like a transitional year for the Amerks where the next wave of marquee players is still a year or two away, but they should still be strong enough to compete for a postseason spot while also not jeopardizing that if a handful of their key players find their way onto the Sabres for a long portion of the regular season.

It’s not that I’m not bummed that there won’t be playoffs, but can we take a closer look at the utter chaos that the team faced this season for one second and accept that the odds got stacked against them to fulfill the potential we saw in the fall?

COVID issues in the winter months kept this team from picking up a good portion of extra points. Remember when Michael Houser was playing games for the Sabres again this year because the goalie situation in Buffalo was depleted? It was even more depleted in Rochester! After not playing an AHL game in the shortened 2021 season, Mat Robson had to play 10 games for the Amerks. While they were fortunate to win 5 of those games, they gave up an extra regulation point in two of them. Charles Williams played in his first two AHL games since 2018-19 for heck’s sake. The Amerks even helped him out and scored 5 goals in the first of those two appearances to get an overtime point. Then Houser himself appeared in 11 games of his own for the Amerks. And to wrap up the goaltending conversation, even though Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen didn’t take too big of a production step in his AHL numbers, he only appeared in 34 games this year himself after getting injured in Buffalo as part of the goalie carousel.

Jack Quinn’s injury limited him to 44 games. Sean Malone’s limited him to 38. Brandon Biro’s big improvement of a season was limited to 47 games. The Amerks’ offense was one of the most prolific in the AHL and they only got half seasons from their leader, third place, and sixth place players in points per game (Quinn at 1.34, Malone 0.95, Biro 0.85). These are as big of, if not bigger, subtractions from the lineup as Samuelsson and Fitzgerald being called up to Buffalo and not going back down.

And even with that, games being canceled across the league placed enough inconsistencies within the division playoff picture that we won’t get the full scope of the season. I’m ruling that a third season of interference from a global pandemic is worth a free pass to play the what-if game both with the goalie carousel and canceled games, especially with the Toronto, Belleville, Rochester race being as competitive as it was in April.

Referencing 23 teams making the postseason isn’t too fair to them either if we’re being honest since each division has its bracket with no wild card crossover this season. There are 13 teams with a points percentage less than the Amerks heading into the final week of games. 54.7% of the points would have then 4th in the Atlantic, 5th in the Central where either the Texas Stars (52.1%) or Iowa Wild (51.4%) are going to make the playoffs, and 6th in the Pacific where the San Diego Gulls, who have a 47.7% points percentage, will get playoff games as the seventh seed in their division.

If the Marlies fall off and the Amerks manage to beat Utica in their final game, it will be a best-of-three series against the 4-seed to be able to face Utica in a best-of-five.

Utica is one of the contenders for the Calder Cup this season, so it’s safe to say that even with Samuelsson, Fitzgerald, and Peyton Krebs, it would be a very challenging 3 games for the Amerks, whose playoff push has been going on for this entire month of April where every game has consistently been crucial to pushing towards a potential playoff berth.

Why would this month of crucial games be dismissed only because there won’t be three more? From a development perspective, if a playoff series is important to experience and growth as a prospect, why isn’t the run to get there? This final three-game weekend was critical to the Amerks playoff chances and included back-to-back games against the same team: I don’t think that should be dismissed since they lost. Heck, if we’re going to talk about how an AHL playoff run can be a good experience for a future NHL playoff run, for a Sabres team that will probably be in the race in March and April next year, having this long of a stretch of important games should carry over similarly.

And finally, because of the AHL roster turnover, I think it’s extra important to remember the pros of that as well: A core having disappointing final results to a season doesn’t linger as long as it would in the NHL. There is a new core around the corner, and if Sabres draft classes finally begin to follow a larger pattern of hitting on picks, it’ll lead to more consistent stretches of good Amerks teams that will be able to make their runs alongside a better Sabres team.

As disappointing as it was for the fanbase and for the Sabres organization that the Amerks won’t be making a Calder Cup run with a fun core that will be (mostly) graduating next season, there were way too many uncontrollable obstacles to declare that the results were a part of a greater failure. This was one of those seasons where you have to throw your hands in the air, say “that stinks”, and then let the memories of the season graduate into what the last memory will be: “Hey remember that year Quinn, and Peterka were dominant in the AHL?”

Chad – Absolute Failure

There’s no beating around the bush here. The Amerks season was a failure if they do indeed end up missing the playoffs. We’re talking about a postseason structure that which 74% of the teams in the league make the playoffs (23 of 31 teams).

I know the Amerks exist in a vacuum to help develop players for the Sabres, but full stop. The objective of that club this season was to make a playoff push with the crop of young players that are in the minors. The trade deadline was focused around keeping veterans not only for the NHL vibes but to not disturb the AHL team in their pursuit.

Kevyn Adams sacrificed not getting extended looks at prospects that deserved NHL games such as Jack Quinn, JJ Peterka, and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen to achieve this objective. Wouldn’t have been nice to get a 20-game look at Luukkonen going into an offseason where goaltending will be the primary focus?

In my opinion, Luukkonen is the biggest consequence of this failure. In reality, it didn’t matter who was in goal for the Amerks because the defensive structure of that team was so bad. That was even the case when Mattias Samuelsson and Casey Fitzgerald were in the minors earlier in the season.

This failure falls on the shoulders of Seth Appert. I wasn’t sold on him when he was hired and to this point, he hasn’t changed my mind. His team fell flat on their face this season and for the second year in a row, they were atrocious defensively.

It also has become a trend for players to perform better in the NHL than they were in the AHL under Appert. We’ve seen this occur with Jacob Bryson, Brett Murray, Mark Jankowski, Fitzgerald, Luukkonen, and Samuelsson.

I understand that the Amerks and Sabres had injuries that hurt them in the middle of the season. Having said that, they were healthy since the beginning of March. In that stretch, they went 10-11-4, earning 48% of the possible points available to them. That’s inexcusable.

They dropped all three games last weekend with their destiny in their hands. Two of those games were against the third-worst team in the league. Again, inexcusable.

I’m not trying to gloss over the growth we’ve seen in the game of Quinn and Peterka this season. However, it’s not enough to forgive failing to meet the top team objective going into this season.

Photo Credit: Rochester Amerks/Facebook