Belleville Senators Rout Rochester 5-2, Tighten North Division Playoff Race

Devon Levi faced four shots in the first eight minutes at Blue Cross Arena. Three of them went in.

The Belleville Senators' 3-0 first-period barrage chased Rochester's starting goalie and effectively decided what both teams had framed as the biggest game of Belleville's season: a direct head-to-head collision for the fifth and final playoff spot in the AHL's North Division. Belleville won 5-2 on Friday night, cutting Rochester's cushion in the standings to four points.

The game turned as early as the third shift. Matteo Costantini hit the post at the Belleville end, and the Senators sprinted the other way. Captain Garrett Pilon wristed a shot from the left circle on a two-on-one with Jamison Rees past Levi at 1:44, his eighth goal of the season. Xavier Bourgault made it 2-0 at 3:31, finishing in front after Philippe Daoust carried the puck in and Olle Lycksell slid him a pass below the red line. Levi's lone stop of the night, on Lycksell at 6:10, drew mock cheers from the Rochester crowd. Defenceman Tomas Hamara then wired a right-circle wrister past Levi at 8:00 for his fourth goal of the season, assisted by Arthur Kaliyev and Graeme Clarke. Amerks head coach Michael Leone replaced Levi with Scott Ratzlaff at that point, Levi having stopped one shot while facing four.

Leone described the third goal as emblematic of a recurring structural problem: "That's tough; we exit the zone, make four or five passes, create entry and then it goes down the other way and they score."

Rochester pushed back in the second period. Anton Wahlberg converted on the power play off a one-timer from Konsta Helenius, and Olivier Nadeau tipped in an Isaac Belliveau shot after a Brendan Warren keep-in to cut it to 3-2. The Amerks had life heading into the third.

Belleville extinguished it quickly. Bourgault's follow-up on a missed breakaway bounced out to Kaliyev, who buried his 37th goal of the season to restore the two-goal lead. The tally extended Kaliyev's own Belleville single-season franchise record, a mark he first set when he scored his 32nd earlier this year. Bourgault sealed it with an empty-netter, his second of the night, to finalize the 5-2 margin.

Jackson Parsons, making his first AHL start since early January, stopped 31 of 33 shots to earn the win. "All phases of our game have to be there and we were missing one tonight," Leone said afterward.

Belleville had entered the night 2-2-2-0 against Rochester this season, outscored 27-18 across those six meetings. Friday's result changed the math sharply. The Senators traveled to Utica the following night for a back-to-back, knowing they had given themselves a genuine claim on a playoff berth that not long ago looked like Rochester's to simply hold.