While the Rochester Americans have a Game 5 to look forward to, the system they’re building is one that can help it thrive year after year.
ROCHESTER, NY — There’s a strange sensation to watch a young NHL prospect become a better player in front of your eyes. There’s equal parts wonder, expectation, and doubt that floods through your mind about what the player is and what they could become. Hope is the high everyone chases in sports and hope is ever-present in the minor leagues.
The promise of better things for the player and, more importantly for fans, the team is what benefits most from that.
But results are all that matter in Rochester. Young prospects becoming solid NHL players, even stars, is what matters most for Buffalo and finding peace in our time to get the results that everyone wants is starting to happen. The prospects are growing and flourishing, and the Americans are winning more games and making the playoffs is a regular occurrence now.
Watching Jack Quinn and JJ Peterka run wild on the AHL last season and racking up points like kids get candy on Halloween was the first sign. This season it’s Lukas Rousek, Jiri Kulich, and Isak Rosén we’re watching become better players in front of our eyes; becoming key components to what the Americans hope is a deep playoff run and what the Sabres hope becomes a long-lasting NHL career in Buffalo.
But there’s an on-ice and an in-the-room aspect to growing a team that’s just as necessary as the leadership at the top of the organization. Blending it all together is part of the business and right now, business is good.
“When Jiri Kulich or Isak Rosén or any of the other youngsters look up at the leadership in our locker room (Michael Mersch, Sean Malone, Ethan Prow), they see guys that have relentless work ethics, that are totally team-first driven guys that are in the shooting rooms that are on the ice late and early and put in an extraordinary amount of extra work on top of practice,” Americans coach Seth Appert said. “So, it’s just easy for them to fall into that because that’s the culture. I can talk culture and say we want to do this and all that, but if my leaders don’t live that culture, what I say means nothing. Those guys live it every day and it makes my job a lot easier.”
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When it comes to leadership in the AHL, it can be a tricky arrangement. Those leaders are also doing their damnedest day in and day out to get the eye of NHL management so that they could get called up or earn an NHL contract of their own. Players in the AHL are working together to win games and win a title, but they’re also working hard to reach the highest level of hockey in the world. That’s where having players who have lived that life before or are still doing so with years under their belts makes the balance so important.
Take Americans captain Michael Mersch. He played college hockey at Wisconsin and was drafted by the Los Angeles Kings in 2011. He came up through that championship-winning system and was a key player on the 2015 Manchester Monarchs Calder Cup-winning team. He got a taste of the NHL the following season when he played 17 games with the Kings, but since then he’s been an AHL mainstay with the Ontario Reign (where the Kings AHL operations moved to in 2015-2016) as well as the Texas Stars. He joined Rochester in 2020 and now at 30 years old, he’s been the Americans captain for two seasons.
That kind of experience doesn’t come easy but what he’s learned through his career is invaluable information for anyone new to professional hockey.
“Being able to share my experience is, is pretty cool, because this was my ninth regular season pro, so to be able to share some things with the younger guys, maybe help them or give them a little piece of advice, some stuff that I learned whether I did or didn’t do and wish I did, and then being able to do that type of stuff is cool,” Mersch said.
Being the guiding hand with this team has proven to work well for everyone involved. The growth shown year-to-year from Peterka and Quinn has paid off well so far into their NHL careers and Mersch has found new life with Rochester as a leader. He’s not a leader completely in the veteran sense, he’s also producing well.
Mersch had 19 points in 28 games in his first season in Rochester and followed that with 54 points last season and he put up 45 points this year. All that came after his production slipped to 27 points in 61 games in his final season with the Stars. Being the guy that’s been there and done that with this group of Americans has helped them come back from down 2-0 in their North Division semifinal matchup against the Syracuse Crunch to force a win-or-go home Game 5 on Saturday.
Part of the learning process is adjusting to the schedule of the AHL where games basically are played every weekend as opposed to every other day. It’s no different in the playoffs. The Americans and Crunch have five days between Games 4 and 5 to practice, watch video, and recoup from a hard-hitting, high-scoring weekend. Downtime means learning about how off-ice work and having good habits leads to better on-ice play.
“It’s very different to Swedish pro games, because there you’re going to have to play two, maybe three games a week and often usually just two games a week and not that many back-to-back,” Rosén said. “Just to take care of your body every day. You got to do it because you feel like shit, but you got to take care of your body and just go out there and as I’ve been growing, to play with (confidence), because it’s all on the mind, because you have to be turned on in your mind to play good. I think that’s the thing I’ve learned too with this many games.”
The results on the ice for the latest group of prospects have been outstanding. Rousek was the Americans’ leading scorer with 56 points, 40 of which were assists. Kulich scored 24 goals in the AHL as an 18-year-old with 46 points. Rosén had 14 goals and 37 points as a rookie. Add in rookie Filip Cederqvist who had nine goals and 20 points and you’ve got a solid really young base. Those guys along with 24-year-olds Linus Weissbach (20 goals, 47 points) and Brett Murray (23 goals, 49 points) and not only do the Sabres have a deeper prospect pool, but the Americans’ have a team that can grow together through the years.
Still, when you’re a first-round pick like Kulich or Rosén, the goal is not just to get to the NHL but to produce consistently well there and maybe even become a star player and that means putting in the work.
“You’ve seen all our players make pretty big strides compared to the beginning of the year,” Malone said. “I think our coaching staff does a good job with them, showing them the ropes and teaching them how they need to play to be successful at this level and progress their careers up to the NHL. So, it’s been fun to watch, and those guys have embraced it. Seeing them in the weight room and put in a ton of work and just trying to put on more mass, because you’re so young, and your bodies aren’t fully developed yet. So, they have done an incredible job and those guys are certainly committed to being good players.”
The evidence of growth comes in how they’ve all performed since around December. It was around that time when Peterka’s scoring took off last season and this year it’s been Kulich and Rosén who have figured out what they can and can’t do as well as the intricacies of the North American game. The maturation and the goal totals rising have fans in Buffalo eager to see them in Sabres colors sooner than later. For now, they’ll try and help the Americans win a pivotal Game 5 and advance in the Calder Cup playoffs thanks to having good people who happen to be teammates.