The Belleville Senators continued their early season home stand Friday night dropping the first of two games this weekend against the Cleveland Monsters.
The B-Sens came into Friday’s matchup having split two games with the Laval Rocket the previous weekend to open the season.
Cleveland opened the scoring just under eight minutes into the first frame when former Belleville Bulls captain Brendan Gaunce got one past Belleville goalie Filip Gustavsson, who was seeing his first action of the season for Belleville.
Despite one power play opportunity and two times shorthanded for Belleville, the score remained 1-0 for Cleveland at the first intermission.
Monsters defenceman Billy Sweezy scored just under five minutes into the second and it was followed up a few minutes later with a solo effort from Brett Gallant to bring the score to 3-0.
Just two-and-a-half minutes into the third period the Monsters scored once more, this time on a goal from Tyler Sikura, to bring it to the eventual final score of 4-0.
Belleville went to the power play three times in the third period, four times in all on the game, but were unable to capitalize.
The team struggled to generate offence all night despite firing 31 shots on Cleveland goalie Jean-Francois Berube.
Gustavsson put together a solid effort with 28 saves on 32 shots but it was to no avail without offensive support.
After the game Belleville Head Coach Troy Mann reflected on some of the team’s missed opportunities in the game.
“We did have some chance, I mean, certainly I thought we really made some saves and there were some turning points where potentially, you know the Kastelic breakaway or the Roby Jarventie post could have changed maybe the dynamic or the momentum of the game. The backbreaker was certainly that third one that kind of went off our guy or their guy on the wraparound. That was tough to come back from, the 3-nothing. I thought the penalty kill was solid. The power play had its struggles tonight, when you get [four] power plays, certainly, you hope to cash in to get the momentum back, especially when you’re trailing in the game.”
Reflecting on the previous weekend’s double-header with the Laval Rocket, Mann spoke about how the team can adjust heading into Saturday’s game against Cleveland.
“I think tomorrow we’ve got to play a little bit more of a support role through the neutral zone. I thought our transition game, as much as we liked the game on Saturday, we kind of reverted back to what we did in Laval from a transition perspective and then at the blue lines we just didn’t make good decisions at times and consequently that makes the puck go the other way. There’s certainly some correctable areas of the game that we saw tonight but overall from an offensive perspective we need some guys to start finding the back of the net here moving forward so you can gain momentum with goals because when you don’t get the goals then, obviously, you’re trailing.”
The loss brings Belleville to 1-2 on the season heading into the second half of the home double header against the Monsters.
The puck drops at CAA arena at 7 p.m.
