The Belleville Senators’ point streak ended at 17 games Thursday night after a 2-1 loss to the Cleveland Monsters.
Nick Paul scored for Belleville while Marcus Hogberg stopped 28 shots. Cleveland’s Sam Vigneault and Nikita Korostelev had goals while Jean-Francois Berube made 24 saves.
Belleville struck just 98 seconds into the game as Paul scored off of Drake Batherson’s pass from the side of the net as he buried his 13th goal of the year to extend his point streak to seven games.
After Batherson was penalized on a questionable tripping call, Cleveland tied the game through Vigneault who got a piece of Kevin Stenlund’s shot at 15:54 on the man advantage.
Belleville thought they had the lead back through Logan Brown but the referees deemed he had kicked in a point shot and the Senators found themselves down 2-1 only 18 seconds later as Korostelev buried his own rebound for his third of the year.
Neither team found the back of the net in the second period although the Monsters had some opportunities as the Senators were short-handed on three different occasions, including a 1:19 5-on-3 disadvantage, but were able to successfully kill off each penalty.
The Senators pushed forward in the third with Batherson having the best opportunity but Berube managed to deny the Sens rookie despite slipping in the crease and the veteran goaltender was able to turn away all eight Belleville shots in the third.
Sens forward Joseph LaBate played in his 200th career AHL game.
