Before he was a silver medal-winning Olympian and a Buffalo Sabres Hall of Famer, Ryan Miller was a young goaltender starting out his career with the Rochester Americans. In other words, a pro athlete in his early twenties still finding his way.
As such, he knew the value of a good deal. His teammates did, too.
“One of the local sub places would always do a deal for tickets,” Miller said. “We’d always drop in the week after that game and get subs.”
Frugality — and local sponsorship grub — came with the territory. But when Miller returns to Rochester this week, his meal will no doubt be taken care of. After all, he’s a guest of honor.
Miller will be inducted into the Amerks Hall of Fame ahead of the team’s 7:05 p.m. game on April 11 against the Laval Rocket. He’ll once again set foot in Blue Cross Arena nearly 20 years after he played his final game for the team.
Miller made 172 appearances in net for the Amerks between 2002 and 2006 before helping to lead the Sabres through a period of prosperity in the back half of that decade. He went on to win the Vezina Trophy, the National Hockey League’s recognition of the league’s best goalie, in 2010.
But Rochester is where the 44-year-old got his pro start. (He was awarded the American Hockey League’s top goalie honor in 2005.) Miller’s homecoming offers him a chance to reflect back on the time he left his native East Lansing to join the pros.
“My time in Rochester was my first time really getting away from home, in a way, as an adult,” he said. “Stepping away and going to Buffalo and Rochester was a big deal. It was important to me to have [good] people surrounding me.”
The nature of the AHL schedule meant the team played games three or four nights in a row, followed by three or four nights off. That off-ice downtime crystallized the on-ice bonding.
“It definitely was not something where you want to just be sitting around watching TV all day,” Miller said. “We had a pretty social group, so it was fun to go around and look for something to do in Rochester.”
Eating subs, sure. But also hearing the electricity of the arena crowd and, in Miller’s case, leading the Amerks to a first-overall finish in the 2004-2005 season. He was eager to talk about the people who made that time special. He mentioned fellow goaltender Tom Askey, with the Amerks from 2000 until 2005, and players of that era like Geoff Peters and Steve Lingren.
“A lot of the guys who went through Rochester at the time ended up with the Sabres,” Miller said. “Looking back, you understand how we were learning to win, but at the time, it was just cool for everybody to build something with that group.”
Miller, who retired in 2021 after more than 300 regular-season career wins, is best known for his time in the crease in Buffalo from 2006 until 2014 and for helping guide Team USA to the silver medal in the 2010 Winter Olympics.
He played in goal at Michigan State University in his hometown before being drafted by the Sabres in 1999. Miller attended the draft in Boston that year with his family, though he offered a retrospective musing: He thought he would’ve been selected a lot sooner than 138th overall.
“I was kind of sitting around waiting for a couple rounds. It actually got to the point where it’s taking a while,” Miller said. “My brother’s kind of messing with me. I’m 18, so he would have been, 14 turning 15, so everyone’s just getting a little bit bored.”
When the Sabres management called his name in the fifth round, Miller said he took it as an affirmation of his talents and exploration of possibility. “I’m doing something right,” he recalled thinking. “Let’s see where this goes.”
It went far. Miller entered the Buffalo Sabres Hall of Fame in 2023 and had his jersey number, 30, retired and hung from the rafters of KeyBank Center.
This week, he becomes an inductee here in Rochester, joining fellow Amerks heavyweights and past inductees like Randy Cunneyworth and Doug Houda — both of whom coached Miller — and Jason Pominville, whom Miller played with on both the Amerks and the Sabres.
Miller said he’s pleased he was able to make an impact here in Rochester as he leveled up for what came next.
“The best thing that kind of happened to me was [I showed] that I could compete at a high level early in my career with some short stints in Buffalo, but then to become a part of something special in Rochester,” he said. “We had some really good teams.”
Patrick Hosken is CITY’s arts reporter. He can be reached at patrick@rochester-citynews.com.
This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2024.
