Rochester Americans Open Preseason with Loss

The Rochester Americans opened their preseason schedule with an 8-2 loss to the Binghamton Senators on Thursday evening, in a game played at RIT’s Gene Polisseni Center.

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The good news: it was only preseason, a meaningless game that, in the end, speaks nothing about how the Rochester Americans will fare in the upcoming season. The Amerks were missing several of their big players, including Tim Schaller, Jerome Leduc, William Carrier, Nathan Lieuwen and other future Amerks like Cal O’Reilly and potentially Matt Ellis.

The bad news: it was still an 8-2 loss against a fierce Binghamton team that the Rochester Americans have to face off again with on Saturday, this time in Binghamton.

The Rochester Americans’ roster also featured several players making their American Hockey League debuts, including forwards Justin Bailey and Nicholas Baptiste and defenseman Josh Chapman. These are all players expected to spend the season with the Amerks, and they’ll have time to grow over the course of the year – you can’t necessarily expect them to kick things off with a bang in the first game.

Ryan Penny and Tobias Lindberg each had a pair of goals for the Senators. Ryan Dzingel, Joe Zarbo, Matthew Zay and Ben Harpur also scored for Binghamton.

Justin Bailey opened the scoring for Rochester in his first AHL game, with a goal assisted by Philip Varone, who returns for his fifth season with the Rochester club.

Colin Jacobs had the Amerks’ other goal, unassisted.

Chris Driedger stopped 23 of 25 shots faced in the win for Binghamton. Rochester’s goaltending duties were split in the loss, with Andrey Makarov allowing five goals on 28 shots in the first forty minutes. C.J. Motte then came in and stopped 8 of 11 shots faced in the third period.

Overall, the Amerks were outshot by a 39-25 margin.

Three stars of the night were, unsurprisingly, all Binghamton Senators players, as Lindberg, Penny and Dzingel took the trio of honors.

Another player from Binghamton to watch last night – and possibly Saturday – is Vincent Dunn. The 20-year-old spent most of the past several seasons in the QMJHL, including all of last year with the Rimouski Oceanic.

Dunn was involved in a fight in last night’s game, facing off with Amerks d-man Chapman. Each were served with five-minute fighting majors, but Dunn got an extra 10-minute misconduct for taking an extra shot after the linesman had separated the pair.

Here’s what the full rosters for Thursday’s game looked like. It’s possible that we’ll see similar rosters for Saturday’s matchup, with the Buffalo Sabres closing out the preseason on Friday.

Binghamton Senators

Defense: Rutkowski-Claesson-Sdao-Humphries-Lepine-Carlisle-Mullen-Rumble-Kostka-Harpur-Tuzzolino-Dieude-Fauvel

Forwards: Robinson-Ewanyk-O’Dell-Paul-Schneider-Zay-McCormick-Hobbs-Zarbo-Dziurzynski-Lindberg-Wideman-Dunn-Guptill-Leveille-Penny-Dzingel-Stortini

Goaltending: O’Connor-Driedger-Greenham

Rochester Americans

Defense: Josh Chapman – Spiro Goulakos – Zach Tolkinen – Colby Robak – Matt Prapavessis – Brady Austin

Right Wing: Cason Hohmann – Mike Seidel – Nick Baptiste – Dan Catenacci – Justin Bailey

Center: Matt Garbowsky – Chris Langkow – Justin Kea – Colin Jacobs – Phil Varone – Allan McPherson

Left Wing: Jack Nevins – Jerry D’Amigo – Garrett Klotz – Jean Dupuy – Scott Jacklin – William Kessel

Goaltending: Andrey Makarov – C.J. Motte

The Americans and Senators face off again on Saturday at 7:05 pm.

Next: Sabres Send 12 to Amerks

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