Rochester, NY… One night after being held scoreless and seeing their four-game winning streak come to an end, veteran forward Chris Taylor set a new team record as the Rochester Americans responded with a 6-4 win over the Syracuse Crunch this afternoon at the War Memorial at Oncenter. The win improves the Amerks to 6-0-0-0 this season against the Crunch and 17-3-1-0 overall.
 
Taylor scored a goal assisted on two others as he continued his ascent up the franchise’s all-time assist list, surpassing Dick Gamble into the No. 4 spot. The 18-year pro needed just one assist to shatter Gamble’s record coming into this afternoon’s contest. Taylor now shows 267 all-time assists as an Amerk, just 16 shy of tying Gerry Ehman’s No. 3 mark of 283. Further, Taylor needs just four more points to move ahead of Norm “Red” Armstrong into the No. 7 spot on the team’s all-time list. 
 
Forward Jamie Johnson potted a pair of goals and added one assist as Graham Mink (1+1), Evgeny Dadonov (1+1) and defenseman Mike Caruso (0+2) each contributed two points of their own. Forwards David Brine and Michal Repik each provided single tallies as first-year goaltender Alexander Salak earned his league-leading 14th win between the pipes with a 26-save performance.
 
Bates Battaglia (1+1), Jonathan Sigalet (1+1) and Pascal Pelletier (0+2) each collected two points for the hometown Crunch as goaltenders Kevin Lalande and Dan LaCosta combined for 31 saves in the losing effort.
 
The Amerks jumped out to an early 2-0 lead midway through the opening frame with goals 31 seconds apart from Dadonov and Johnson. Taylor, Mink and Caruso all picked up their first points of night with assists on the goals.
 
Rochester would extend its lead to 3-0 just over three minutes later as Mink converted on the power-play after Syracuse’s Brian Lundbohm was penalized for slashing. The Amerks needed all but 10 seconds on the man-advantage opportunity to capitalize and take a 3-0 cushion into the locker room after one period of play. Taylor notched his second assist of the game and newcomer Ville Koistinen recorded his first point as an Amerk with an assist on the play as well.
 
The Amerks took their largest lead of the game two minutes into the second stanza as David Brine netted his team-leading ninth goal of the season to give Rochester a commanding 4-0 lead. Syracuse quickly cut the deficit in half, however, with a pair of second-period tallies from Battaglia and Tom Sestito.
 
After the longtime inter-state rivals exchanged early third-period goals to kickoff the final frame, Sigalet lit the lamp for his second of the season at 11:26 to put Syracuse within one. The 5-4 lead would not last long as Johnson’s second of the night at 15:01 gave the Amerks some breathing room and Taylor’s empty-netter with four ticks left on the clock negated Syracuse’s rally and insured the win for Rochester.
 
The Amerks continue their season-long six-game road trip this week with back-to-back tilts with the Manitoba Moose on Tuesday, December 1st and Wednesday, December 2nd. Both contests are slated for 8:30 p.m. EST starts at the MTS Centre and will be broadcast live on SportsRadio 1280 WHTK and FM 107.3, Rochester’s Sports Talk.

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