Amerks survive tense late-season chase, clinch Calder Cup Playoff berth

Rochester’s season was one night from collapse before it finally found enough late poise to survive. The Amerks entered their finale at Hershey on a four-game skid, with Utica suddenly tied in the race, and Devon Levi called it what it felt like: a playoff game, a “Game Seven for our season.”

That pressure was earned over a miserable stretch that turned the last week of the regular season into a grind. Rochester had lost 2-1 to Cleveland, then was routed 8-0 at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, leaving the Americans needing at least one point on the road against the league-leading Bears. They came out firing, putting 23 shots on goal in the first period alone, and Trevor Kuntar’s power-play goal gave them the first lifeline they needed. Carson Meyer later delivered the equalizer that secured the point and punched Rochester into the 2026 Calder Cup Playoffs after a 5-4 overtime loss.

The result mattered far beyond one tense night in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Rochester is celebrating its 70th anniversary season and is headed to the postseason for the 51st time in franchise history. The Amerks have reached the Calder Cup Finals 16 times and won six championships, but this path was anything but comfortable. The North Division offers five playoff spots, with only the top three teams getting byes, and Rochester spent the last days of the regular season fighting off a surging Utica club that was 18 points out of a playoff position at the All-Star break. By the end, Utica had pulled all the way into a tie.

That emotional chase set up a first-round series that quickly exposed both Rochester’s resilience and its flaws. After a 5-0 loss to Toronto in Game 1, head coach Michael Leone said some older players needed to “look themselves in the mirror” and criticized the team’s “self-inflicted wounds.” The Amerks answered with a 4-0 win in Game 2, keeping their season alive and proving the berth was not just a survival story but a test of whether they could reset fast enough for playoff hockey.

Levi remains central to that answer. He finished the regular season with a league-leading seven shutouts and a 25-13-4 record, and in last year’s postseason he posted two shutouts in three games against Syracuse, stopping 90 of 92 shots. Rochester did not enter the playoffs polished. It entered battle-tested, and the next round would reveal whether that kind of stress forged an edge or merely masked deeper cracks.