The Rochester Americans will play their 66th season with a full 76 game slate after playing 29 games last season, traveling only back and forth on the 90 primarily playing Syracuse and Utica with a few trips to Cleveland. This will be refreshing not only for the players in the games, but also for front offices across the NHL as they will be able to get a much clearer picture of the next players up in their organization. 

From a Sabres perspective, the key Amerks can be grouped into two categories. Let’s take a look at them. And before you look too far into the order, I’m going numerically down the team roster on their website in the order of forwards, defensemen, and goalies.

The Spotlights: The players you’re going to ask about frequently. 

Jack Quinn: So…it’s very challenging to not directly compare Quinn to his lottery pick peers, but that’s not what we’re doing here. Alexander Holtz is the only one of those peers playing in the AHL’s Eastern Conference, so it’s not even like the comparisons can be done easily between him and any of the players in the first half or so of the 2020 first round. It’s not too much to hope that he is the Amerks leading scorer as their likely go-to guy on the powerplay and as the guy who had the most offensive prowess leading up to the beginning of his AHL career. two goals and seven assists in 15 games last year was objectively not good enough. He needs to be much better and much more productive at the AHL level to place his NHL projection on track.

JJ Peterka: After a very strong training camp, Peterka could be a long-term call-up sooner than expected if his early Amerks season matches that of his preseason impact. Fortunately for him, there isn’t that much pressure on Peterka to make his NHL debut this season if it doesn’t work out as quickly. With the state of the organization in a wait-and-see mode, a traditional North American transition season would be just fine for Peterka. Granted if he is in Rochester, Kevyn Adams wouldn’t mind seeing him at the top of the Amerks scoring leaderboard.

Oskari Laaksonen: Now that we reach a defenseman, it’s important to remind everyone that the data available at the AHL level limits how much we can assess from them. Laaksonen is in year two in the AHL and managed an impressive 17 points in 28 games. At age 22, the organization’s goal for Laaksonen this season should be to become the without-a-doubt top right shot defenseman on the Amerks and perform to a level that places him at the front of the line to make the jump to the Sabres next year.

Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen: The Amerks have a (relative) wealth (It’s just an adjective, not a hot take) of goaltending, but that doesn’t help the clarity of the outlook for UPL this season. There is probably a spectrum of scenarios that determines where he plays and for how long (injuries pending):

• If he thrives out of the gate, he likely replaces Dustin Tokarski in Buffalo as the platoon with Craig Anderson and it becomes his net primarily for the rest of the season
• If he’s good out of the gate, he likely sees the bulk of the starts over Aaron Dell and goes into next season with at least a share of the Sabres job easily in sight. Short term injury call-ups would go to Dell. A long term injury would likely go to Luukkonen
• If he’s just okay, they will let him have the net in Rochester for the full season and then start this process back up again next year with another training camp battle and Dell goes up and down probably no matter what.
• If it goes worse than okay, we will probably again see this process restart again next year, but with Erik Portillo probably making the jump to pro hockey next season, that Amerks job becomes a little bit less secure for Luukkonen going into 2022-23, and Portillo becomes the guy who gets the development fraction of time and focus in Rochester. 

It’s not a dire outlook for Luukkonen despite the pressure, as his 0.906 save percentage in the NHL last year was by no means bad or suggestive that he might be out of place in the NHL, but his 0.888 in 14 games with the Amerks doesn’t come with too much assurance that the Amerks will not have to be concerned about their goaltending this year. A 0.910 or higher in the AHL should be Luukkonen’s goal as the guy for the Amerks.

Let’s See What Ya Got: The next tier of guys who aren’t going to be the focus of Sabres fans, but find themselves in an interesting place to either get their feet wet in the league or prove an NHL outlook is still in the cards.

Brandon Biro Biro showed up on the scene for his first AHL season after four years at Penn State, putting up five points in 15 games (2G 3A). He will be able to find a role with the Amerks in his first full AHL season. He was over a point per game in his junior season, so there is scoring potential here from the 23-year-old left-winger.

Matej Pekar: People have loved him at development camp. His *adds quarter to swear jar* grit has some people dreaming of a Brad Marchand role from Pekar. The problem though? In 38 pro games last year, he scored two goals. In 13 games in the Czech league, he had a goal and three assists, and then in 25 AHL games, he had a goal and five assists. He averaged a penalty a game (50 PIMS in 25 games) in the AHL and was mostly a bottom-six contributor to the Amerks forward lines. I don’t think it’s asking too much to need way more offensive contributions from Pekar in season two in Rochester if he is going to have NHL aspirations in 2022 or beyond.

Linus Weissbach: Weissbach is a four-year college player making his pro debut this season. He reached 41 points in 31 games for Wisconsin last year. A seventh-round pick in 2017, reaching the AHL is a success for the organization, but if he quickly gets acclimated to the AHL, he could go from a nice story to a 23-year-old who could find himself next up. Of course, that age also could work against him since it also means he’s much closer to the peak of the ol’ age curve than other AHL newbies. 

Brett Murray: Like Peterka, Murray almost found his way onto the Sabres roster to start this season. After nine goals and 15 assists in 55 games in his first season in the AHL, he put up nine goals and 11 assists in 27 games last season. We’ll see how his production changes this season to determine how much development he still has left before entering his mid-20s.

Casey Fitzgerald: This one is less of a wait-and-see because of intrigue and more of a wait-and-see because of his development track. Fitzgerald will be 25 in February and is starting his fourth season with the Amerks after four seasons at Boston College and has been surpassed by Laaksonen on the depth chart on the right side of the defense. This will probably be the final wait-and-see year for Fitzgerald before it’s all but settled if Fitzgerald can make the next jump or if he will be an AHL journeyman. A good goal for him would be to see if he can outplay Ethan Prow, who will likely be the first call-up for right-shot defensemen.

Conclusion

Other guys like Sean Malone, Brandon Davidson, and the aforementioned Ethan Prow will also be in the mix for call-ups, especially early in the season, but with their AHL/NHL careers fairly established at this point, it’s mostly a situation where their role on the Amerks is more of the “Hey, you do you” variety. 

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. Either way, there’s lots to check out down on the farm. Thanks for reading!

Photo Credit: Rochester Amerks/Facebook