The Rochester Americans, AHL affiliate of the Buffalo Sabres, will open the 64th season in franchise history on Friday, October 4 against the Syracuse Crunch. The team, and the AHL as a whole, released their regular-season schedule earlier this week.
This season’s lineup will offer Sabres fans the chance to see some of the team’s prospects face off against prospects from teams including the Tampa Bay Lightning, Vancouver Canucks and Ottawa Senators. Over the course of their 76-game schedule, the Amerks will face 15 other teams. They will not face any Western Conference opponents during the regular season.
For the first time since the 2011-12 season, the Amerks are not scheduled to play a regular-season game in Buffalo. Recently, Amerks games played at KeyBank Center weren’t particularly well-attended, and some Rochester fans felt slighted by having a home game taken away from them, so it makes sense to keep Buffalo off the regular-season schedule.
However, it is likely that the Amerks will play at least one preseason game in Buffalo, as they have in years past, at Harborcenter, so stay tuned for more details on that.
As in years past, and is typical with the AHL, it’s a weekend-heavy schedule for the Amerks. They’ll play 25 games on Friday nights, and 25 games on Saturdays. An additional six games will be played on Sundays, all but one of which will be on the road. Finally, Wednesdays will continue to be a popular day for Amerks games; 17 of their match-ups will be in the middle of the week. The final three games will come on Tuesdays, including a New Year’s Eve game at 5 p.m. in Utica and a St. Patrick’s Day matchup at 1:30 p.m. in Toronto (at Scotiabank Arena).
The Amerks will play the Syracuse Crunch (Tampa Bay Lightning) a whopping 12 times, and the Binghamton Devils (New Jersey Devils) and Utica Comets (Vancouver Canucks) 10 times each. They’ll face off against the Cleveland Monsters (Columbus Blue Jackets) eight times, and the Toronto Marlies (Toronto Maple Leafs) and Belleville Senators (Ottawa Senators) six times.
Other opponents include Charlotte (Carolina), Providence (Boston) and Hershey (Washington). The Amerks will end the home portion of their regular season at Blue Cross Arena on Friday, April 10 against the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, before closing the season in Binghamton the following night.
To download the entire Amerks schedule for the 2019-2020 AHL season, click here.