Riley Emmerson may have fought his last fight as a Rochester American on Saturday night when he fought Kevin Harvey of the Syracuse Crunch during the first period.  When the Amerks lost Steve MacIntyre off waivers they still needed someone to play the role of the fighter on the team and that player turned out to be Riley Emmerson.

Emmerson had been assigned to the Florida Everblades at the start of the season and then loaned to the Amerks by the Wild for the season.  It was Emmersons first year playing in the AHL and he didn’t do too bad.  He may have lost some fights, but also wasn’t afraid to drop the gloves.  He earned a lot of respect for not only his fighting skills, but also being able to play a regular shift when needed.  Often when the team ‘goon’ gets into a fight he doesn’t play the rest of the game.  Benoit Groulx wasn’t worried about that and regularly gave Riley a decent amount of time on the ice.

He’s heading into the summer as a free agent, even if the Panthers or Amerks don’t give him an offer I doubt it’ll be the last we see of him.

At the end of this fight Harvey knocks Emmerson down to the ice with more of a forearm than a punch, but it’s still a knockdown and a good one at that.

Emmerson said that Harvey caught him off balance and he went down.  He also said that he should have taken Harvey a little more seriously, he was kind of laughing at him.