Photo: Belleville Senators
The Belleville Senators showed good resolve on Saturday night, bouncing back from a disappointing result on Friday to exact some revenge on the arch-rival Toronto Marlies with a 6-3 victory.
Sporting black and red sweaters for Indigenous Communities Night, the Sens came out looking unbothered by their 6-1 loss to the Marlies Friday night.
After a high-tempo first half of the contest, Phil Daoust put the Sens in the lead first by scoring on a rebound with an open Toronto cage, recording his 10th of the season.
Vinni Lettieri tied the score on a powerplay dart top shelf on Jackson Parsons at 14:03, but a couple minutes later, the Sens got a response through Stephen Halliday.
Belleville went along the blueline with a quick pass, allowing Dennis Gilbert a chance to take a shot that kicked off Tyler Boucher’s skate right to the Toronto product for a backhand goal, his second of the season.
Luke Haymes squeezed home a cross-crease feed from Travis Boyd through Parsons to get the game back on equal footing at 7:52 of the second period.
The Marlies hit a couple posts and the Sens made them pay for those missed opportunities, with Hayden Hodgson deflecting home a seeing-eye point shot from Scott Harrington through Artur Akhteyamov into the low right corner for his fourth of the year.
Dennis Gilbert added another helper on the Sens third go-ahead tally of the night.
The Sens were further boosted by a late penalty at the buzzer in the second that produced a powerplay and an ensuing goal early in the third from Olle Lycksell.
The Swedish forward accelerated to split the Toronto defence and roofed a high shot under the crossbar to increase the B-Sens lead at 1:12.
The Marlies managed to pull back to within one at the 6:43 mark when Benoit-Olivier Groulx beat Parsons through the legs, but the Sens managed to re-establish the two-goal spread on a feed from Daoust to Kaliyev for his team-leading 22nd of the year with exactly nine minutes to play.
An empty netter from Kaliyev, his 23rd, put the finishing touches on the victory in the final 2:17.
Final shots favoured Belleville 33-29, with Parsons stealing 26 away from Toronto to earn second star honours.
All throughout the night, the Sens held an online jersey auction for the B-Sens Indigenous sweaters on Dash Auctions
A link to the auction can be found here. Bidding closes for Group 1 on Friday and for Groups 2 and 3 next Saturday.


