Amerks goalie Michael Houser keeps grinding it out in the AHL; Rochester loses in OT

Michael Houser has spent enough time in the American Hockey League to know the difficulty of the assignment he was being tasked with Sunday afternoon at Blue Cross Arena.

With the Rochester Amerks playing their third game in the span of 44 hours - their first three-games-in-three nights weekend of the season - the chances were that they weren’t going to have much jump and would need Houser to have a big performance if they hoped to beat the Syracuse Crunch.

Houser did his part, stopping 26 shots, but the last one of the day got past him with 1:54 left in overtime and the Crunch escaped with a 3-2 victory in front of a Kids Day crowd of 8,352, the largest gathering for a regular-season home game in more than three years.

“When I know I’m the freshest guy out there because I didn’t play last night, you put a little bit more on yourself to be a little bit sharper than normal,” said Houser, who did play in Friday’s 6-2 victory over Toronto, then sat out the 5-1 loss in Toronto Saturday.

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This is life in the AHL, an unforgiving schedule that is heavily concentrated on the weekends because those are the days and nights that typically draw the most fans. And when you have a weekend like this one, against two teams in your own division, in the midst of a tight playoff chase, that can be a draining experience for sure.

So the fact that the Amerks were able to at least salvage a point thanks to Jiri Kulich’s tying goal with 2:53 left in regulation was big.

“For us to find that extra energy in the third period and get the game tied and get a point out of it, it's really encouraging for our group and I'm happy with how we finished the game,” said center Brandon Biro.

As expected, the Amerks struggled for a good chunk of the game and were trailing 2-1 after two periods. “I think we were just a little bit disconnected,” Biro said. “We just weren't on the same page I felt like for the first two periods. I don't think it was lack of effort or anything, but come the third period, I think we kind of got on the same page a little bit more and we played together a bit.”

They generated several good scoring chances including a Biro breakaway, a shot off the post by Matt Bartkowski, and then a good look for Anders Bjork from in tight with 3:42 to play. Finally, all that work was rewarded when Bjork ripped a slap shot from the point that Syracuse goalie Max Lagace stopped, but the puck squirted out to his right and Kulich was all alone to tap it in to a yawning cage.

Unfortunately, after killing the final minute of a power play to start overtime, a turnover at the Rochester blue line by Lawrence Pilut ultimately led to the winning goal. Alex Barre-Boulet broke in alone and was stopped by Houser, but he tracked the puck down in the corner, worked it behind the net, then curled around out front and found Darren Raddysh alone on the left side and he pumped a shot past Houser.

This was just Houser’s 13th start of the season and only his fourth since Dec. 9, but coach Seth Appert wasn’t worried about what he’d get from the 30-year-old veteran.

“The beauty of having Houser, and I talk to our guys about this stuff a lot, the young kids especially,” Appert said. “When a coach writes your name in the lineup, or he calls your name to go out for a shift, what you really want more than great play, you want to feel good about what's going to happen when you call his name.

“When you call Michael Houser’s name, you know he's gonna compete his tail off, you know he's gonna be an unbelievable teammate, you know he's gonna battle whether he has a good game or a bad game. He's going to give you that all the time so you feel good with that. That's why he's had so much success here, it’s why he’s had such a long career, that's why he's played well when he went to the NHL.”

If you were to fire up the hockey-reference.com website and type Houser’s name into the player search, this is what you would see: Only six NHL games played - all with the Buffalo Sabres - in a professional career that dates back to 2012, a 4-2 record, a 2.97 goals-against average, and a .917 save percentage.

That’s not bad, and the numbers are skewed negatively because he had one particularly brutal night on May 6, 2021 when he allowed eight goals to the Sidney Crosby/Evgeni Malkin Pittsburgh Penguins.

Six games is barely a cup of coffee, and now that he’s on the wrong side of 30, his chances of ever getting back to the NHL and staying are dwindling. Yet still, he’s grinding in Rochester because the quest never really ends.

“That's what it is, it's just trying to get back there,” he said in referencing what continues to push him. “If you ask anybody in the locker room, that's what their goal is. Whether it's Matt Bartkowski who’s 34 or Kulich who’s 18. Everyone wants to play as well as they can here. And if you do, people will notice and that's just the nature of professional sports. So I know me personally, that's what pushes me.”

Houser was fortunate in the first period when the Crunch rang two shots off the goal post, but he allowed only a power-play goal by Shawn Element at 15:59. Gage Concalves moved in from the right wing boards and passed to Felix Robert who was battling at the left post. Robert was able to steer the puck to Element parked at the right post and after one unsuccessful whack, he banged it past Houser.

The Amerks found some mojo early in the second and that paid off at 4:26 when Sean Malone won a faceoff clean from Gabriel Dumont, the puck slid back to Vinnie Hinostroza and he wired a wrist shot from the circle that beat Lagace short side to tie the game at 1-1.

However, the Crunch answered quickly at 8:15 when Houser was unable to find a rebound after he stopped a shot from the right point by Myers. The puck suddenly appeared in the crease and Barre-Boulet just tapped it in for the easiest goal he could imagine. Appert was screaming for goalie interference but the officials disagreed and the goal stayed on the board.

The end wasn't what they hoped, but now the Amerks will rest up before embarking on another three-game weekend coming up, home Friday against Laval, then at Springfield and Providence.

“I thought there was some real good things through this three-game stretch,” Appert said of taking three of a possible six points which keeps the Amerks anchored in a playoff spot with 25 games remaining.

Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana.To subscribe to Sal's newsletter, Bills Blast, which will come out every Friday during the offseason, please follow this link: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Rochester Amerks lose 3-2 in overtime to Syracuse Crunch