Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
Good days have been in abundance lately in Rochester, where a six-game winning streak has pushed the Americans into the North Division lead, one point ahead of Cleveland.
Top forward prospects Konsta Helenius and Anton Wahlberg are back in town from the IIHF World Junior Championship in Ottawa. Playing for Finland, Helenius won a silver medal while picking up six assists in seven games. Wahlberg tied for fourth in tournament scoring with eight points in seven games (four goals, four assists) with Sweden. Both prospects are in their first full AHL seasons before even reaching the age of 20. Helenius, at 18 years and 8 months the youngest player in the AHL this season, was selected 14th overall by Buffalo in last June’s NHL Draft and has provided 17 points (six goals, 11 assists) in his 28 games with the Amerks. The 19-year-old Wahlberg owns 10 points (four goals, six assists) through 25 games after joining the organization as a 2023 second-round pick.
Tuesday saw one of the Sabres’ brightest stories this season, Amerks forward Tyson Kozak, earn another recall to Buffalo. A 2021 seventh-round pick, the 22-year-old had spent his first two pro seasons building a spot for himself in Rochester before getting a December promotion to Buffalo, where he collected his first NHL goal in his second game there. With 12 points (six goals, six assists) in 24 games with Rochester, Kozak has already matched his AHL career season-high.
And on Wednesday, two more key pieces of the Sabres’ future got good news from the AHL, as goaltender Devon Levi and forward Isak Rosén earned invitations to the 2025 AHL All-Star Classic presented by Spotlight 29 Casino on Feb. 2-3. It will be the second consecutive All-Star appearance for the 21-year-old Rosén, who has a team-leading 27 points (13 goals, 14 assists) in 30 games for Rochester. Levi has split his first two pro seasons between Rochester and Buffalo; the 23-year-old has gone 11-2-1 with a 2.19 goals-against average and a .914 save percentage in 14 games for the Amerks this year.
Rochester showed some early-season promise in constructing a six-game winning streak, but lost seven of their next eight games to fall to 8-7-3-0 at U.S. Thanksgiving. But they’ve rattled off 13 wins in 15 contests since then, and they’ve shown they can also handle the grind of the AHL road, with a 15-3-1-0 record (including a current eight-game win streak) and a plus-25 goal differential away from home. Even when the games and the bus hours accumulate, they have been able to stick to their plan and bring a strong nightly effort.
The arrival of Levi from Buffalo on Nov. 18 helped turn the tide for the Amerks. He has allowed two goals or fewer in nine of his 14 starts, including shutouts of Syracuse on Nov. 29 and Charlotte on Dec. 7.
“As a coach,” Amerks head coach Michael Leone said via the team website Wednesday, “I respect our group a lot for how consistent they’ve been to show up for every single game and compete and work.”
The Amerks picked up victories in Springfield and Bridgeport last weekend to take them into a somewhat lighter portion of their schedule. They sit atop the division, but only seven points separate them from the fifth-place Crunch. They have a chance to gain some more ground this weekend, with Utica coming to town on Friday before another short trip to Syracuse the next night.
Buffalo management has made it clear that a competitive Amerks team is a needed component for player development. The Sabres brought in Seth Appert in 2020 to step behind the Rochester bench, and the club reached the North Division Finals in 2022 before taking Hershey to six games in the Eastern Conference Finals a year later. Appert is in Buffalo now as an assistant to head coach Lindy Ruff, and Leone took over following successful stints with Green Bay of the United States Hockey League as well as with the United States National Team Development Program.
Leone’s mandate has been much the same as Appert’s: develop young talent and help them to play meaningful games down the stretch and into the Calder Cup Playoffs. And part of that process is learning how to play a mature, NHL-style game individually and collectively. Protect leads. Balance risk versus reward. Manage shift length.
Some nights the Amerks are capable of simply overwhelming opponents. They stacked up 15 goals in a two-game visit to Belleville in mid-December. They have scored 26 goals during their current six-game winning streak. But they have also struggled with game management, notably during their skid in November. One bad shift or one ill-timed decision can mean lost points even in an otherwise well-played game.
Recently though, rather than late-game misadventures, the Amerks are shutting down opponents – or at least not seeing one goal surrendered turning into two or three. Learning how to do that is one key difference between the AHL level and levels further down the development chain.
And that commitment has their head coach’s attention.
“I think our guys have bought in with what it takes to win consistently at this level,” Leone said. “You feel it on the bench with 10 minutes left to go in a game, and we’re up. As a coach you’re comfortable because they’re saying all the right things and you kind of just stand there and appreciate the guys buying into that.”
On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.