(Photo: Belleville Senators)
Story by Matt Tidcombe
The Belleville Senators won the penultimate Battle of Ontario of the season as they beat the Toronto Marlies 4-2 Saturday afternoon at the Ricoh Coliseum.
Danny Taylor stopped 31 shots while Jordan Murray, Max Reinhart, Nick Moutrey and Colin White scored for Belleville. Calvin Pickard made 13 saves before being pulled while Garret Sparks turned aside 14 shots. Miro Aaltonen and Andrew Neilsen scored for Toronto.
Trailing 2-0 entering the third, Aaltonen cut the Sens lead to 2-1 4:55 in as he found a loose puck behind the net, dragged it out front and beat Taylor for his 23rd goal of the season.
And it was a 2-2 game just 19 seconds later as Neilsen slapped one past Taylor on an odd-man rush to hit the reset button on the game.
After Sens head coach Kurt Kleinendorst called a timeout, Belleville settled back down and re-took the lead with 6:06 to play on Moutrey’s first with Belleville as he beat Sparks from an acute angle near the right side goal line.
Taylor made a last ditch save with 28.6 seconds left to deny Chris Mueller before White secured the win with an empty net goal with 4.5 seconds left.
The Senators struck three minutes into the second as Murray intercepted an errant Toronto pass, skated up the middle of the ice into the offensive zone and wired a slap shot past Pickard for his seventh goal of the season.
Reinhart doubled the Sens lead to 2-0 at 11:09 on his 11th of the year after he took a feed from David Dziurzynski and beat Pickard with a low wrister.
Taylor came up with a big save in the Sens goal soon after as he denied Jeremy Bracco on a breakaway after he left the penalty box for serving Pickard’s unsportsmanlike penalty. Pickard was pulled after giving away the penalty at 11:09.
But Taylor made an even bigger save on a Marlies power play with less than four minutes left in the period as he slid across the crease to rob Toronto’s Mueller with an incredible glove save to keep the Belleville lead at 2-0 before on the same power play stretching across to make a big toe save.
The Sens outshot the Marlies 9-5 in the first period with perhaps the best scoring opportunity going to Moutrey who skated in on Pickard on a short-handed breakaway and was turned aside by a left pad save.
Dziurzynski made his Sens debut after signing a PTO earlier in the day.
Belleville completes its 3-in-3 Sunday at 3pm when they welcome the Laval Rocket to the Yardmen Arena on First Responders Appreciation day. CJBQ has the broadcast for Eastern Overhead Doors and Deerhaven Farm and Garden beginning at 2:50 p.m.
