The Belleville Senators did what they had to do on Friday night at CAA Arena, knocking off the Rochester Americans (AHL affiliate of the Buffalo Sabres) 5-0 to collect a couple more points in the race for the Calder Cup Playoffs. The only problem is, both teams that Belleville is chasing, the Syracuse Crunch and Cleveland Monsters, also won on Friday, keeping the Senators four points off the pace.
For the first time in a while, the Senators jumped out to a multi-goal lead after 20 minutes. Xavier Bourgault started things off at 4:36, smashing his 10th goal of the season past Felix Sandstrom on a powerful power play one-timer, assisted by Phil Daoust and Garrett Pilon. Six minutes later, Tristen Robins fought his way down the right wing wall, ducked under a check and fed a pass across to the goalmouth, where Wyatt Bongiovanni tapped in his 19th goal of the season to extend the lead. Tyler Boucher earned the second assist on the play. Then, about six and a half minutes after that, Oskar Pettersson flew off the Belleville bench, intercepted a pass by Kale Clauge and snapped a wrist shot past Sandstrom. The goal was Pettersson’s sixth of the season and snapped a 23-game pointless drought for the 21-year-old Swede.
The Senators would finish the game’s scoring in the second period, with the second goals of the night by both Pettersson and Bongiovanni at 2:38 and 14:53, respectively. Pettersson finished off a play from Jamieson Rees and Djibril Toure, while Bongiovanni scored on a three-on-one with assists to Robins again and Jorian Donovan.
Leevi Merilainen was fantastic for the Senators throughout the night, stopping all 20 shots he faced and earning his fourth shutout of the season. It was the sixth career shutout for the 21-year-old Finn, who also has three National Hockey League shutouts with Ottawa this season.
Belleville and Rochester will play game seven of their eight-game season series Saturday night at CAA Arena at 7 o’clock.
It’s also the second of three straight games between the two North Division rivals.
