Syracuse, NY (September 29, 2009) – The Syracuse Crunch fell to the Rochester Americans in their preseason finale at the War Memorial at Oncenter tonight, 4-2, in front of 2.027 fans.
It didn’t take long for rivals Syracuse and Rochester to show their true feelings toward each other. Less than 15 seconds into the game, a scuffle broke out between Syracuse’s Libor Ustrnul and Trevor Gillies, resulting in five-minute fighting majors for each. From that point on, fans at the War Memorial at Oncenter saw little action in the first period until the 7:28 mark when MikeYork took a goal-mouth feed from Chris Taylor and buried it past Dan LaCosta to make it 1-0 Rochester.
LaCosta had a major save just under 12 minutes in to keep the score 1-0. Rochester kept pressing and Evgeny Dadonov scored Rochester’s second goal with just under two minutes left in the first frame when he took a cross-ice feed from Chris Taylor and rifled a shot to the top right corner to make it 2-0 Amerks.
Syracuse bounced right back and took control of the last minute of the period to cut its deficit in half on a great individual effort by Pierce Norton. Norton weaved his way in past a Rochester defenseman pulled the puck to his backhand and beat Ryan Mior for the score. Another attempt down the middle by Brent Regner was unsuccessful, however the Crunch kept Rochester from taking control of the puck until time ran out in the first period.
Just under three minutes into the second period, Rochester’s Jamie Johnson took advantage of the open pocket on the left side and beat LaCosta to make it 3-1 to extend Rochester’s lead back to two goals. The Crunch had a great opportunity a few minutes later when Regner found an open line down the middle, but Mior made a key save, keeping the score 3-1. That was until Jared Aulin rifled a shot off a rebound from a Tim Filangieri point bid past new Rochester netminder Tyler Plante with 6:35 remaining in the second period to make it a 3-2 game.
The Crunch had a chance to get back to within one when Keaton Ellerby was called for tripping with two and a half minutes to go in the frame, but failed to capitalize. Shortly after, former Crunch defenseman Jon Landry put Rochester up 4-2 when his rebound shot squeaked by LaCosta with exactly one minute left in the second.
Syracuse had another power play when Taylor was called for hooking 19 seconds into the third but couldn’t do much with the man-advantage. Both teams took a number of third period penalties, including a scrum between Tom Sestito and Kendall McArdle, but there was no scoring.
The Americans were able to shut down the Crunch the rest of the way, with a final score of 4-2. LaCosta stopped 25 of 29 shots.
