The Belleville Senators opened their 2021-22 AHL season with a road game against the Laval Rocket Friday night.
Belleville kicked off the scoring just under halfway through the first period when Matthew Wedman got one past Laval goaltender Cayden Primeau.
Just under 10 minutes later, with less than two minutes left in the opening frame, the Rocket evened the score with a goal from winger Michael Pezzetta with the primary assist coming from former Belleville Senator J.C. Beaudin.
Before the period was up, Laval centre Jean-Sebastien Dea took a roughing penalty which set up Belleville to start the second frame on the power play.
With the game tied at 1-1 to start the second period the Rocket took the lead with a shorthanded effort by Lukas Vejdemo.
Seven minutes later Belleville would come back to tie the game when Philippe Daoust scored a power play marker with the assists coming from Jonathan Aspirot and Lassi Thomson after Vejdemo took a tripping penalty.
That would prove to be it for Belleville offensively as Laval took control the rest of the game.
Before the end of the second period, Laval retook the lead with goals from Danick Martel, Dea and Beaudin, the last of which would end the night for Belleville goaltender Mads Sogaard, who was replaced by Kevin Mandolese.
Just ten seconds into the final frame the Rocket iced the game with another goal, this time from Ryan Poehling, which brought the score to the eventual final of 6-2.
It was an uncharacteristic night for Mads Sogaard, who broke into the league late in the shortened 2020-21 season and dazzled B-Sens fans, as he allowed five goals on just 17 shots before being pulled.
After the game Belleville Head Coach Troy Mann talked about Laval’s third goal as a turning point in the game.
“I believe so, I think there’s momentum swings throughout a hockey game and we talked about it in the intermission. Obviously, when you tie the game up after a team making what I felt was a pretty good push and then we get the tying goal, to give that up 16 seconds later, it’s certainly a momentum change in the opposite direction and I didn’t think we recovered from that goal quite frankly, because the next thing you know it was 5-2. Certainly that was the turning point of the game for me.”
The B-Sens have little time to prepare for their next bout with the Rocket as they return home on Saturday to face them again in their home opener.
Mann spoke about adjustments they’ll have to make with the tight turnaround.
“Well we tried to mix up the lines a little bit there as the game progressed. Certainly didn’t like our top two lines early, we tried to make a little switch there. I thought our fourth line was very, very effective throughout the game, probably our most consistent line. The Kastelic, I did like their start but they kind of faded as the game went on. We’ll certainly look at maybe switching up the top nine and trying to build some chemistry there. Obviously, I think our neutral zone transition has to be way better. We’re just standing around in the neutral zone and not moving the pucks quick enough and I thought, certainly, five-on-five was something that I really noticed from the bench and we’ll take a look at it here. At the end of the day, it’s a work in progress so we just want to get home tomorrow night, win our game and we’ll get back to work on Monday.”
The B-Sens begin a string of five games at home Saturday when Laval comes to town as they try to even the score and move to 1-1 on the season.
The puck drops at CAA arena at 7 p.m. and the rink is now open to full capacity for fans that are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 no less than 14 days prior to the day of the game.
You can learn more and purchase tickets on the Belleville Senators website.
