The Belleville Senators have developed a flair for the dramatic this month, as they went to overtime for the eighth time in March and eventually beat the Lehigh Valley Phantoms 3-2 in a shootout at CAA Arena, on Saturday night.
Belleville battled back from a two-goal deficit and killed off a penalty in overtime, en route to the victory, which gives them a 7-3-3-0 record for the month and keeps their shootout record perfect at 5-0 on the season.
Lehigh Valley opened the scoring at 13:19 of the first period when Garrett Wilson beat Mads Sogaard on the power play. The Phantoms would also score about 3:30 into the second period, with Nick Lappin putting in a rebound to extend the lead. But Belleville would answer back with a pair of their own in the second. Parker Kelly stuffed in a pass from Jake Lucchini at at 8:48, his fifth of the season and Lucchini would bury his 17th of the season at 16:04 of the frame, putting a power play goal of his own past Pat Nagle.
In the shootout, Belleville’s Lucchini, Egor Sokolov, Zach Senyshyn and Roby Jarventie were all stopped, with Cole Reinhardt scoring the only goal. Sogaard would turn away all five shooters he faced, which included Adam Clendening, Tanner Laczynski, Wade Allison, Matt Strome and Brennan Menell.
Head Coach Troy Mann:
“I really liked our resilience tonight. We got off to a slow start, I thought Lehigh came at us good and I don’t know if we were anticipating that and thought it might be an easier game? But, Sogaard was the difference in the first period and I thought we regained our legs down 2-0 and then we were the better team the rest of the way.”
“This time of year teams tend to play much stronger defensively. They’ve got systems in place because we’re six months into the season and teams are fighting for position in the standings. Quinte frankly, when it’s a tie game and there’s 10:00 left in the period, you really are in overtime, because if you get scored on it’s difficult to get that tying goal. So, we wanted to set up a mentality today that if the game is tied with 10:00 left, we need to do the right things.”
Fast Facts
- Zach Senyshyn collected his first point as a Belleville Senators, assisting on Lucchini’s second period goal
- Mads Sogaard made 31 saves on 33 shots
- Belleville tied a season high for shots against in a period, giving up 20 in the first frame
- Cole Reinhardt scored his first career AHL shootout goal on his first attempt
- Belleville snapped a streak of four-games without a power play goal
submitted to Quinte News
