SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Allan McPherson scored the game-winning goal Saturday at the War Memorial Arena as the Rochester Americans cooled off the Syracuse Crunch, 2-0. The Amerks (27-33-5-1) evened the season series at four in the final game against the Crunch (40-19-8-0) this season. 

With the loss, the Crunch relinquished second-place in the Eastern Conference back to the Hershey Bears, who defeated Manchester 6-2 to move one point ahead of Syracuse. 

"If you look over the past couple of weeks, we've been pretty good overall," head coach Rob Zettler said after the loss to the Amerks. "For whatever reason, we were flat tonight. We didn't have a lot of jam or physicality in us. We got a little bit desperate in the third but there wasn't really much going on." 

Both goalies pitched shutouts through two periods and the only markings on the scoreboard were penalties and shots until McPherson snapped a quick shot from the slot past Kristers Gudlevskis, 3:04 into the third period. Dan Catenacci and Chad Ruhwedel recorded the assists on McPherson's second goal of the season.

Gudlevskis streak of six-straight wins ended with a 24-save performance, his record drops to 24-12-2 on the season. Andrey Makarov recorded his fourth shutout of the season, second against Syracuse, the last on Halloween in a 3-0 win at the War Memorial.  

Catenacci tossed the puck into the empty-net with eight seconds left in regulation to close the door on the Crunch, who were looking to tie the game with the extra-attacker.  

The Crunch started the game with three power-play opportunities, on the third Joel Vermin took a penalty to lead to 4-on-4 hockey and give Rochester a shortened man advantage of 31 seconds.

After the power play ended, David Broll and Matt Pelech dropped the gloves and locked arms without landing many punches until the referees broke up the fight. J.P. Cote and Jordan Samuels-Thomas decided to give the fans a bit more of a show 12 seconds later when they dropped the gloves and Cote took Samuels-Thomas to the ground.

Bradyen Point made his professional debut for the Crunch after arriving in Syracuse Friday. He played on a line with Yanni Gourde and Carter Ashton with Tanner Richard missing his second-straight game. 

The Crunch finished 0-for-5 on the power-play, but increased its penalty kill numbers to 33 kills in the past 34 attempts, holding Rochester 0-for-3. 

The Crunch host the Binghamton Senators Wednesday before taking their final weekend road trip of the season against Bridgeport Friday and Springfield Saturday. Syracuse plays five of its final nine games at the War Memorial.