A year or two ago I was in Montreal visiting some colleagues, and of course the conversation of hockey came up. We were trying to decide where to watch the game that night as the Montreal Canadians were scheduled to play. Someone mentioned that the Montreal Canadians was probably one of the dumbest hockey team names. Or at least the most unoriginal.
Of course, no self-respecting fan would just take a comment like that so they quickly turned to me and said something to the effect of, “well you have The Americans!” I was genuinely shocked. Did we? That seemed like a pretty terrible name for all the same reasons. I of course asked for an explanation since I had never heard of this hockey team, then I realized my mistake. The Amerks was short for The Americans, or The Rochester Americans to be more precise.
For all the years I’ve lived in Rochester I had never gone to one of The Amerks games until this weekend. The place was packed! It may have had something to do with the fact that it was a special night for Veterans, but I was impressed nevertheless. I think the turn out was 2 or 3 times larger than the NBA game I went to see!
The game itself was pretty great, as in a fight broke out and we know the only reason people watch hockey is to see the ice turn red. I was more interested in finding out who The Amerks was a farm team for though. After the show I did a bit of research and had to chuckle when I saw that the team, while currently a farm team for the Buffalo Sabers (let’s go Buffalo!), originally started out as a farm team for The Montreal Canadians.
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