The Amerks just couldn’t get anything going when they took on the Binghamton Senators tonight at the Broome County Veterans Memorial Arena, losing to the Senators 4-1.
The team started without one of their better players. Jacob MicFlikier has a cracked foot. He will be out for about 4 weeks.
Riley Emmerson was back in the lineup, however, and made his presence know when he took on Yablowski (typo stays). I would call the fight in favor of the mohawked Senator. Not a horrible fight for Riley, but he looked a bit rusty.
He wasn’t the only one to drop the gloves tonight. Neil Clark took on on Geoff Waugh. I would have called the fight for Neil who gave a handful of jabs to Waugh’s head. But, Clark also busted up his hand. He left the game for a few minutes while he got it checked out but, was back on the ice before his penalty was up.
Jordan Henry also decided to “fight” tonight. He tangled with Zack Smith. Jordan did little to nothing in this fight so, he lost. When asked what made him drop the gloves tonight because it is rare that he does he came back with, “It won’t be a rare thing anymore.” To which I must ask…Do you like getting punched in the head? To his credit, he did square off well…he just needs to learn how to throw a punch.
I do recall a few times last season where Henry dropped the gloves with fire in his eyes and actually won. Maybe the problem really was that he wasn’t angry when he was fighting. Nothing had happened between him and Smith, they just kind of decided to go at it.
The Amerks weren’t playing bad for the first 8 minutes. But, two quick goals in less than a minute for the Senators set the tone for the rest of the game. Greg Mauldin scored at 12:04 on the PP while Michal repik was serving for a bench minor (a penalty the Amerks are getting far too comfortable with lately). Then only 48 seconds later Matt Carkner blasted one past Beckford-Tseu from the blueline. The Amerks were trying to play catch-up the rest of the game.
In the second period, Tomas Kudelka made it 3-0 when he netted one 56 seconds into the period. Meyer was still serving his penalty from the end of the first period for holding.
Michael Duco stopped the Amerks from being shut out at 17:15. Meyer made a clean pass to Shawn Matthias in the Amerks’ zone. Matthias made his way through two forwards and both defensemen with his stick sorcery. He then made a perfect pass to Mike Duco in front of the net where he put it home past Binghamton goaltender, Jeff Glass.
Both teams were scoreless for the rest of the game until 17:15 in the third period when Denis Hamel put away an empty netter to solidify the Sens’ win.
At the end of the third period, Mackenzie took a nice dirty hit on Stefan Meyer whose knee went sideways into the boards. Because of this hit, Meyer will be out of the lineup until at least after the all-star break. He has a grade two knee sprain. Add that with his linemate (Micflikier) missing and we have some problems for this weekend. Just when things were picking up…
I am not saying that the Amerks can’t win without Meyer and MicFlikier but, others are really going to have to step it up. Stefan is the leading scorer on the team and Micflikier isn’t far behind seeing as he spent time with the Florida Everblades for no reason.
Also…where is Cory Murphy? He cleared waivers, and the Panthers aren’t going to need him. Send him here to play. Unless he decided to take off for Europe as fast as humanly possible. That would make me hate those European leagues even more than I already do. But, he would probably finish off the year here before running away to the pansey league.
An anonymous Amerks’ fan after the game said “We need Tyler back.” When asked who they would get rid of they said, “Chris Beckford-Tseu!”
The Amerks are in Manchester today preparing for their game tomorrow against the Monarchs. They will then travel to Providence to take on the Bruins on Saturday night. They don’t return home until Thursday the 22nd when they play, once again, against the Syracuse Crunch.