After the Checkers came out strong with a slew of their own chances to start the game, it was the Americans who broke the ice with a tally just under three minutes into regulation. The visitors pounced on that momentum from there and knocked in another pair of tallies less than a minute apart to amass a towering three-goal lead before the seven-minute mark of the opening frame.
The Checkers settled down following that flurry and kept the chances flowing toward the Rochester net. They finally cracked the Rochester defense early in the third to cut into their lead when Riley Nash knocked in a slick feed from Logan Hutsko, but they couldn’t quite get the comeback off the ground. An Amerks’ empty-netter was answered with a Patrick Giles strike in the waning seconds of regulation, but despite pumping 47 shots on goal across the night the Checkers came up on the short end of a 4-2 final score.
QUOTES
Coach Geordie Kinnear on the gameI don’t know. It’s a funny game. I really enjoyed our start to the game and, what happened? They come down and get into our zone once and they end up scoring a goal. We’d like the second goal back, and then the third one, give them credit because they were driving the net. I thought we did a lot of good things. We obviously didn’t come out on the right side of the pile here, but I felt there was a lot of really good stuff. We’ve got to just learn to be a resilient group throughout the year. It’s part of the journey, and we’re learning to be resilient right now.
Kinnear on the start
It wasn’t about the start because our start was fine. Once they get the one goal, they scored a nice goal, we can’t give up another one. We’ve got to continue to build from there. It’s a bit of a trend where we give up one and we’re giving up a couple right after each other. We know what to do, we’ve talked about it all year long. Another growth lesson here. We’ve got 11 players that are first year, so there was some growth here for those guys today.
Kinnear on breaking through to score goals
Guys just have to be resilient, stick with it, do it the right way, be patient and the goals will come. As soon as you start getting away from it, cheating and all that other stuff and you start scoring, you’re not going to win many hockey games. You have to stick with it and be patient.
Kinnear on changing goaltenders after the second goal
I wanted to create a spark. We gave two quick goals. We needed to change something, and I thought the guys responded even after (Lyon) gave up that goal. I thought the guys played the right way all the way through.
