SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Two American Hockey League rivals across the Thruway are going to meet in Syracuse on Thursday night with one in a win-or-go-home playoff situation.

"A couple months ago, we were sixth in our division and we finished third. So, there's a lot of belief in what we do. This is what’s nice to see," said Syracuse Crunch coach Joel Bouchard.  

The Crunch are facing elimination from the Calder Cup playoffs after dropping the weekend road series against the Rochester Americans — Game 1 a 3-2 Rochester win, and Game 2 a 4-0 victory for the Amerks — but if you ask Bouchard, the team's been playing survive-and-advance hockey for far more than this best-of-five first-round series.

"It's crazy when you think about it,” he said. “We won 14 of our last 17 games and we still because it's still competitive. That's what the division is all about. So we kind of had our back the whole year."

Opening faceoff of Game 3 is at 7 p.m. at the Oncenter.

Crunch alternate captain Gabe Fourtier believes the games in Rochester were closer than the score indicated.

"You don't get the bounce, they get the bounce; I mean, they played they played well, too," he said. "So it's back to the little details; I think that's what we need to focus on. We know we can beat them. And like I said, it's two games that we lost. We gotta take some positive out of that."

Back on the blue line, Max Crozier has helped the team refocus. On Wednesday, he was called up to help the Tampa Bay Lightning in an elimination game of their own. The Lightning fell to the Florida Panthers, so there's a chance he could make his way back to Syracuse for Thursday night's Game 3.

"That's the fortunate thing about this first round is that there's time in between games. So we have time to kind of regroup here and start wrapping it back up before Thursday," he said.

A breath of fresh air and a renewed sense of desperation could only be helped by a packed barn Thursday night.

"That's a huge boost to coming home to this ice. Our home crowd, it'll be huge," said Crozier. "I can feed off the crowd as much as we can get them going. You know, it's just playoff hockey. You just got to stick to it, shift by shift.”

The Crunch are down 0-2, but feel like they're in the driver’s seat to get back on track toward a Calder Cup.

"Both games that are going out of the way based on the scoring chances," he added. "We’ve just got to capitalize on our chances and play harder defensively and stick to our disciplined style hockey.”

"You’ve got to win three games to win the series,” said Fourtier. “So it's not over.”