Marlies open weekend with loss to Rochester

Maybe this team isn’t infallible after all. The Toronto Marlies lost another one tonight, falling 3-2 to the Rochester Americans in a game that went right down to the wire, giving them a (gasp) losing record in their past ten games.

The trouble started for Toronto in the first minute of the game, as a puck sneaked through traffic and in behind Jeff Glass to theoretically put the Amerks up 1-0, only for it to be disallowed for goaltender interference. That should’ve been a welcomed break, but Rochester managed to get a real one just twenty seconds afterwards. A giveaway by Colin Greening in the defensive zone led to an easy feed from Cal O’Reilly to Cole Schneider to give the Sabres affiliate an extremely early lead.

Ten minutes later, they extended it with an incredibly well-played breakout on the powerplay. While Brendan Leipsic sat in the box, Nick Baptiste had an entire net to place his tenth of the season into as punishment for his prior slash.

The Marlies would never be able to fully come back, but they did make a couple of valiant efforts. Viktor Loov finally scored his first goal of the season early in the second period, unleashing an absolute cannon of a shot from the blue line past Linus Ullmark. It was part of an 11-4 shot run by the Marlies in that twenty-minute span, which carried over into a 12-6 run in the third. But Rochester’s best line on the night clicked again, this time with O’Reilly picking up his 5th goal of the season.

The bulk of those dozen Toronto shots came in the final moments in the game, and for a quick moment, there was some hope for them. With 96 seconds to go in regulation, Andrew Nielsen did his best to mimic Loov’s prior tally by scoring his own point shot, a trademark of his throughout the year.

As the seconds winded down, the Marlies did everything they could to force overtime. But even with Glass on the bench and a sixth attacker out, they couldn’t find a way to make it happen.Glass, who played in his second appearance this season, stopped 22 of 25 shots. Backing him up was Garret Sparks, which implies that his team suspension has elapsed. Kasperi Kapanen led the team with six shots on goal.

With the loss, the Marlies fall to 10-7-1-1 on the year. They’re now seeded in 3rd in the North Division and have two chances this weekend to turn that back around, both against the Hartford Wolf Pack at Ricoh Coliseum. Saturday’s game is at 5PM, while Sunday’s will be played at 3.