Rochester, NY - Syracuse Crunch captain Mike Angelidis tallied twice as the Syracuse Crunch defeated the Rochester Americans 5-3 tonight at the Blue Cross Arena.
Goals from Brett Connolly, Richard Panik, Danick Gauthier and Angelidis, along with 28 saves from netminder Dustin Tokarski earned the Crunch their first win against the Americans this season. With the win the Crunch improve to 23-7-2-3 overall and 16-3-0-2 away from the War Memorial.
Connolly opened the scoring with his 14th goal of the season 10:25 into the first frame. Connolly potted the rebound of a Gauthier point shot to put the Crunch up 1-0. Dmitry Korobov also got an assist on the play.
Rochester pulled even when Mark Mancari capitalized on a two-on-one rush at the 13:14 mark of the opening period. Mancari scored off the feed from center Kevin Porter, Joe Finley picked up the secondary assist.
Richard Panik regained the Crunch lead with a long shot from the point, beating Amerks goaltender David Leggio on the far side 6:50 into the second period. Ondrej Palat added his team-leading 23rd assist of the season on the goal. Angelidis extended Syracuse's lead at the 10:54 mark of the second period with his sixth goal of the season assisted by Alex Killorn and Matt Taormina.
Luke Adam scored a power-play goal with 33.5 seconds remaining in the second period to cut the Crunch lead to 3-2. Evan Rankin passed the puck from behind the net to Adam who flipped it past Tokarski. Amerks right wing Brian Flynn tied the game with 8:35 to play in the third period, knocking the puck out of the air and into the Crunch net.
The Crunch retaliated just 55 seconds later with Gauthier's third goal of the season and second point of the game. Angelidis scored his second goal of the game with 1:49 to play, securing a 5-3 Crunch victory.
CRUNACHABLES: Danick Gauthier registered his first professional assist on Brett Connolly's first period goal…With his third period goal tonight was also Gauthier's first professional multi-point game Alex Killorn has eight points in his last six games…Dustin Tokarski has started nine of the Crunch's last 10 games…During that span Tokarski is 7-1-0-1.
