Just over a week and a half ago the Buffalo Sabres hired Jason Botterill as the their new GM and it’d still be tough to find anyone that doesn’t like the move. A guy who played for the Amerks and Sabres and a guy who’s been a part of a Stanley Cup winning team. During his opening remarks he openly talked about the need for depth and the need to win in Rochester as an important piece of success with the Sabres. No one had to ask Botterill about the Amerks, he lead the conversation.
Local media ran with it as they should have mentioning that winning is the goal unlike the last decade where the only thing local media seemed to care about was players moving up to the Sabres. The talk of Jason Botterill and winning with the Amerks was mentioned everywhere on social media, print, television and the radio. All the talk was about the need to win to get better.
That brings us to Monday afternoon when the announcement was made that Jason Botterill signed his first player, Justin Danforth and local media was for the most part silent.
ESPN Rochester mentioned the signing during the late afternoon broadcast. Paul Hamilton wrote about the signing on the WGR550 web site along with a tweet. Our friend @AmerksExtra mentioned it on Twitter as well but that’s it.
(ps… you can follow us on Twitter via @LetsGoAmerks)
No mention of this anywhere on the Democrat & Chronicle, 13 WHAM, WHEC, Spectrum News, Rochester First or Fox Sports. A quick glance through the twitter accounts of local sports reporters and not a mention there either. Not even a retweet or a simple like of the Amerks tweet of the news. Nothing. Not even a copy and paste of the official press release.
As quickly as local media jumped on the Amerks bandwagon again they quickly forgot the team even existed.
Why should they mention Justin Danforth? He’s the first player signed by Jason Botterill for the organization as a depth player. The undrafted 24yr old college graduate played in five games for the Amerks at the end of the 2016/17 season and quickly tallied two goals and two assists. Teams in the AHL rely on players signed to AHL contracts as much as they rely on players on NHL contracts to win games, playoff series and championships.
Denis Allen Jr, a contributor for this site writing scouting reports wrote this after a game:
Even though he wasn’t able to score, Danforth put forth the exact type of effort needed to secure Ullmark his first shut out. If this game is any indication of his professional work ethic, I would love to see the Amerks sign him through next year. His hard working, aggressive style is exactly what Rochester needs to consistently win games.
Read the rest:
http://www.lga585.com/2017/03/27/scouting-report-3262017-justin-danforth/
We’re not here to hype the kid as the leagues next MVP but he clearly made an impression to be signed on May 22 to start building the team for the 2017/2018 season and that’s worth mentioning.
