For the first time in the American Hockey League’s 2025 Calder Cup playoffs, the Rochester Amerks skated dejectedly off an ice surface Wednesday night.
After sweeping Thruway rival Syracuse three straight in the North Division semifinals, the Amerks came face-to-face with the best team in the AHL during the regular season, North Division winner Laval, and the Rocket showed everyone at Blue Cross Arena they are not to be trifled.
The Rocket were firing all night on offense and in a back-and-forth game that featured plenty of excitement, they earned a 5-4 victory in Game 1 of the North Division finals.
“The margin for error is really small against a team like that,” Amerks coach Michael Leone said, lamenting a couple mistakes that led directly to Laval goals.
Rochester had just tied the score at 4-4 midway through the third period when Oliver Kapanen managed to deflect a shot from out near the blue line by Logan Mailloux with 4:38 left to play, and the Rocket held off the Amerks from there including the final minute when Rochester had an extra attacker on the ice and had a couple great chances to score.
“I think that’s what we’ve got to do better, I think it was too much highs and lows in our game tonight and that’s why we lost,” said forward Isak Rosen. “I think when you play such a skilled group, you’ve got to be on your toes all the time.”
Here’s what happened in the game:
If it felt like the Amerks’ goalie hadn’t allowed a goal in three weeks, it’s because he hadn’t until Mailloux ripped a slap shot past him from the high slot on a power play at 10:04, ending his shutout streak at 166 minutes, 35 seconds.
Of course, there was a reason for that. Thanks to the ridiculous 13-day layoff between the Syracuse and Laval series, Levi hadn’t been beaten since April 25 in Game 1 against the Crunch. He then blanked Syracuse the rest of that game and all of the next two to finish that sweep.
Jiri Kulich nearly gave the Amerks a quick lead on a power play less than two minutes into the game but he rang a one-timer off the crossbar. However, Rochester was awarded another power play just 50 seconds after the first one expired, and this time they grabbed a 1-0 lead at 4:33.
The Amerks had good zone time before Lukas Rousek set up Kyle Clague for a one-timer from the left point that sailed over the glove of Laval goalie Cayden Primeau who never saw the puck because Josh Dunne was planted in the crease screening him.
Laval then moved ahead 2-1 at 18:19 as Rochester’s Anton Wahlberg turned the puck over down low, and after Levi stopped a point blank shot by Florian Xhekaj, the rebound came right to David Reinbacher and fired it home.
There was all kinds of action in the middle 20 minutes, and unfortunately for the Amerks, they remained one goal down when it was over.
Clague’s fantastic postseason – he scored a goal in each of the three games against Syracuse – continued at 2:23 of the middle period when he moved into the Laval zone and backhanded a pass to Konsta Helenius who wristed one past Primeau to tie the score at 2-2.
Just 4:25 later, Dunne broke in on left wing and after Primeau stopped him in tight with his right pad, Dunne was able to corral the rebound and wrap it around the other post to put the Amerks back up 3-2.
But the Rocket really began to dominate zone time in the second half of the period and the result was two goals that sent them back ahead 4-3.
The tying goal came on a pretty play as Beck Owen centered to Brandon Gignac who found space in the slot 20 feet in front of Levi and ripped a one-timer low to the glove side at 14:26. And then with 42 seconds left, Levi stopped a shot by Sean Farrell, but the puck came right back to Farrell who quickly slipped it to Alex Barre-Boulet and the long-time Amerks killer who joined the Rocket after several seasons with Syracuse, beat Levi in tight.
“We had some long shifts in the D-zone and they scored on a couple of those shifts,” said Rosen. “We need to manage the puck better and we know we’re a good defensive team when we do that, so just clean up that and I think we’ll go on Friday.”
The Amerks tied the game at 11:18 when Noah Ostlund found Rosen in the bottom of the left circle and the leading scorer did not miss from there, and then defenseman Vsevolod Komarov kept it tied 33 seconds later with a great defensive play.
Levi came out of into the right circle to play the puck but Kapanen beat him to it and had an open net to shoot at until Komarov came sliding into his path to block a sure goal.
However, Kapanen got his revenge less than four minutes as he tipped in a shot from high slot by Mailloux for the game-winning goal with 4:38 remaining.
“I liked our push in the third, and it was five minutes left to go in the game and they made a play,” Leone said. “We don’t get a box out, we don’t get a block, and that was it. They won a battle, they went low to high, got a shot on that front screen. But yeah, just got to do a better job of managing the game.”
As for Levi, after being impenetrable against Syracuse, he obviously ran into a highly-skilled team because none of the five goals he allowed were cheapies.
“He made some really good saves,” Leone said of Levi, who finished with 29. “He’ll be ready to go the next game for sure. He battled hard, he gave us a chance and that’s all you could ask for.”
Game 2 will be played Friday night in Rochester.
Sal Maiorana has covered the Buffalo Bills for four decades including 35 years as the full-time beat writer for the D&C, he has written numerous books about the history of the team, and he is also co-host of the BLEAV in Bills podcast/YouTube show. He can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com, and you can follow him on X @salmaiorana and on Bluesky @salmaiorana.bsky.social.

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