Utica saves season with dominant win over Amerks to set up winner-take-all Game 5

There was one team Tuesday night that was facing what would have been a somewhat shocking early playoff elimination at Blue Cross Arena and wow, what a response the Utica Comets delivered to save their season.

With the exception of the third period in Game 1 of the best-of-five North Division semifinal series with Rochester, the Comets really haven’t looked like the team that piled up the most points in the AHL’s Eastern Conference during the regular season.

That all changed in Game 4 as they defeated the Amerks 4-2 on the strength of two goals by the indomitable A.J. Greer and a suffocating and physical defense that completely shut down the Amerks’ attack and made goalie Nico Daws’ evening pretty uneventful.

“There’s another level of competitiveness that a championship caliber team rises to when their back is against the wall and they did that tonight and it took us too long to get back to that level,” Amerks coach Seth Appert said.

Utica scored early in the first period and then it scored often in the second - three goals in a span of less than 10 minutes - which in essence turned the third period into 20 minutes of cardio exercise, though Rochester did score twice in the final 4:13 to make it look closer than it actually was.

Game 1: After a fast start, Amerks get run out of the building and lose to Utica

Game 2: JJ Peterka's hat trick gives Amerks 4-3 overtime victory

Game 3: Amerks push Utica to edge of elimination with OT win to set off Blue Cross Arena celebration

With the series now even at two games apiece, the teams will head down the Thruway for the deciding fifth game Thursday at Adirondack Bank Center.

“Isn’t it a shame this isn’t a seven-game series?” Comets coach Kevin Dineen said. “It’s so well played by both teams. They just come at us so hard, we were on our backs the first three minutes and then we got ourselves straightened out and we played a complete game and it’s nice to see results follow through that.”

Here’s what happened in Game 4:

First period: Amerks lucky it was only 1-0

After surviving an early push by the Amerks, the kind almost every home team has in the first few minutes as it plays off the energy of the crowd, the Comets dominated the rest of the period and set the tone for the night. They eventually skated off with a 1-0 lead and probably were feeling like it could have been more.

On the goal at 6:53, the Comets forced a defensive zone turnover by Rochester’s Peyton Krebs which set everything in motion. Utica’s Tyce Thompson eventually gained control in the right circle, found Brian Flynn in the slot and he quickly fed Nolan Foote who buried a short shot past Aaron Dell.

Once they were ahead, the Comets really started buzzing on offense and locking it down on defense and they finished the period outshooting the Amerks 13-2 for a 13-6 overall period advantage.

Second period: A.J. Greer is unstoppable

Rochester was awarded the first power play of the night about seven minutes into the period when Daws purposely lifted his goal mask off as the Amerks were applying pressure.

The Amerks had a couple chances to get the tying goal but couldn’t cash in, and then less than a minute after the penalty expired, the snowball started rolling downhill for Rochester and it turned into an avalanche.

Stop me if you heard this before, but Greer - villain No. 1 to Amerks fans - scored two straight for a 3-0 lead, one off a 2-on-1 rush in which he kept the puck and beat Dell with a wrist shot through his glove, the second when he cleaned up a juicy rebound left by Dell after he’d stopped Chase DeLeo from the slot.

“He’s a good hockey player,” Appert said. “He gets a lot of his offense on line rushes and the power play. They’re a team that is really dangerous on the attack, they’re a quick strike team, a line rush team. They’re really good in those areas so when you’re out there against him, you have to manage the puck to make sure he doesn’t get line rushes and you have to try to keep them off the power play as much as possible.”

The lead increased to 4-0 when DeLeo scored on a power play while the Comets were enjoying a two-man advantage with 1:38 left in the period.

Third period: Amerks avoid the shutout

The Amerks couldn’t get much of anything going for most of the final period because as they did all night, the Comets made almost every offensive zone entry for Rochester a chore. The Amerks’ most dangerous players like Krebs, JJ Peterka, Arttu Ruotsalainen, and Jack Quinn simply had no time or space.

Finally, thanks to a pair of power plays, the Amerks were able to beat Daws twice in the final 4:13 to ruin his shutout. Ruotsalainen ripped one home from the right circle off a setup from Casey Fitzgerald, and Mark Jankowski scored the second with just 50 seconds remaining.

“When you’re playing such a highly skilled team, you’ve gotta take away some time and space or else they’re gonna run you over,” Dineen said. “That’s kind of been the theme so far in this series, when we let their guns roll, they are very impressive. We feel like we can create offense against any team in the league and when we take care of our own end, we tend to have success.”

By the numbers

► The first two periods were so one-sided that the Comets outshot Rochester 26-11. The Amerks made up ground in the third to get it back within 33-32.

► DeLeo, Utica’s leading regular-season scorer with 56 points, had been held off the scoresheet in the first three games before scoring a goal and assist Tuesday.

► Daws did not play well in the two games at Utica as he had a 3.46 goals-against and an .863 save percentage, so coach Kevin Dineen turned to Akira Schmid for Game 3 Sunday night. That didn’t work out so well, either, as he gave up four goals including the winner from a tough angle off the stick of Ruotsalainen.

► Amerks coach Seth Appert gave Dell the third period off and inserted backup goalie Michael Houser for his first playing time of the postseason.

► Ruotsalainen scored 18 goals in 57 regular-season games. He’s already scored seven in just six playoff games which leads the AHL.

► There were only nine combined power-play opportunities for the two teams in the first three games. In other words, the officials were letting an awful lot of stuff go. They did remember they had whistles in this game as the teams had a combined eight power-play chances.

They said it

► Appert on the Amerks’ inability to close the series: “They rose their physical urgency and their physical competitiveness by 10 to 15% and it put enough of our guys just kind of on our heels for a second. We talked about this in the third period in Belleville, how hard it is to end a team’s season, especially teams that are physically competitive like Belleville and Utica are.”

► Dineen on going back to Daws in goal: “There’s a lot of different stats and analytics and we can talk about different ideas that you can have for how you’re going to make your decisions and sometimes you go with your gut and we wouldn’t have gone wrong either way, but he played a hell of a game.”

Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana.

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Amerks vs. Comets: Utica dominates to set up Game 5 in AHL playoffs