The Belleville Senators dropped a back-and-forth contest 4-3 to the Springfield Thunderbirds Friday night at home.
Coming into the game looking to get back into the win column following a 4-2 loss to the Toronto Marlies on January 3, the B-Sens also continued to enjoy the presence of longtime NHL player Michael Del Zotto who is down from the Ottawa Senators.
It was the Thunderbirds who struck first when Petter Crinella scored just under seven minutes into the game to take the lead.
Three quarters of the way through the frame the Sens went to the power play following a penalty to Springfield’s Alexey Toropchenko for cross checking.
With less than 30 seconds remaining on the man advantage Belleville’s Andrew Agozzino scored his ninth of the season to knot the game at one heading into the first intermission.
Early in the second the B-Sens went to the power play again following a Crinella tripping penalty and under a minute into the power play Del Zotto scored his first in a B-Sens sweater to take a 2-1 lead.
The lead was short lived as under two minutes later the Thunderbirds’ Steven Santini scored to tie it back up, however less than one minute after that Del Zotto struck again to regain the lead.
Just over the halfway mark of the second period Belleville winger Egor Sokolov took an elbowing penalty that would prove costly as the Thunderbirds scored to tie the game at three which held into the second intermission.
Despite the success of Belleville’s power play on the evening it eventually became their undoing as Nathan Walker scored short handed seven minutes on the nose into the final frame, a goal that would eventually hold up as the winner for the Thunderbirds.
For his part Belleville goalie Mads Sogaard stopped 33 of 37 shots faced on the evening in the losing effort.
Del Zotto also collected an assist along with his two goals for the night’s first star honours while Zac Leslie followed behind with two assists.
After the game Belleville Head Coach Troy Mann touched on some of the positives for his team from the game.
“I thought it was a well played hockey game. There was momentum swings from both sides and we had plenty of opportunities to score. It was nice to see the power play come alive with some good movement and a couple of goals. It was unfortunate that the game winner came on the power play but overall I thought there was good compete. We’ve talked a lot about if we can score three we can win a lot of hockey games with our goals against in the top ten but unfortunately a team like Springfield who’s been a very good offensive team this year with a great power play were able to get four on us.”
The sting of the loss will be short lived for Belleville as they turn around 24 hours later to play against the Thunderbirds at home again.
The teams will do battle at CAA Arena Saturday night with live coverage beginning on 800 CJBQ at 6:50 p.m.
