AHL Syracuse Crunch

Crunch End Season and Columbus Era with 5-2 Win Over Rochester

Published on April 11, 2010 under American Hockey League (AHL)
Syracuse Crunch News Release


Syracuse, NY - The Syracuse Crunch said goodbye to the 2009-10 season and their 10-year affiliation with the Columbus Blue Jackets in style, defeating arch-rival Rochester by a 5-2 count for the first time this year on the strength of another three-point performance from Maksim Mayorov in front of a standing-room only crowd of 6,317 fans tonight the War Memorial at Oncenter.

Tonight marked the 800th and final Crunch game as the AHL affiliate of the Columbus Blue Jackets. Syracuse will now be affiliated with the NHL's Anaheim Ducks.

The Crunch wasted no time and scored the game's first goal less than two minutes into the game for the second straight night when Trevor Frischmon found his own rebound and banged the puck past rookie Alex Petizian, who was making his professional debut.

Syracuse continued to control the game and went up 2-0 at the 11:46 mark of the first. Jordan LaVallee-Smotherman's shot from the right point caromed out to Tyler Murovich, who dug the puck free and chipped it quickly over to Mayorov on the left side. Mayorov didn't miss, chipping the disk past Petizian for the goal.

The score stayed that way until late in the second stanza when Mayorov tallied again to put the Crunch up 3-0 on a highlight reel end-to-end rush that ended with the Andizhan, Russia native snapping a shot inside the post, giving him six goals in his last three games.

The Crunch extended their lead to 4-0 just 2:32 into the third when the puck popped out to Mike Ratchuk in the slot and the South Buffalo, NY native faked a slapshot, deked to the left and pinpointed a wrister off the right post and past Petizian.

Rochester got on the board and cut the Crunch lead to 4-1 when Graham Mink corralled the puck, cut hard to the front of the net and stuffed it past Kevin Lalande just over eight minutes into the third.

The Americans made it 4-2 when David Brine tallied his 14th of the season with just under five minutes to play in regulation, but that was as close as Rochester would come to tying it.

Nick Holden became the answer to a trivia question when he added an empty-netter with 36 seconds remaining to make it 5-2 in favor of the home team, becoming the last player to score for the Crunch in the Columbus era.




American Hockey League Stories from April 11, 2010


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