Kaliyev Scores Hat Trick as Belleville Shuts Out Manitoba 5-0

Arthur Kaliyev walked into CAA Arena on Friday night with 33 goals and a quiet claim on Belleville's franchise scoring record. He left with 36.

His hat trick powered the Senators to a 5-0 shutout over the Manitoba Moose in the first game back from Belleville's mid-season break, with Leevi Meriläinen stopping all 26 shots he faced. The 36-goal total puts Kaliyev five ahead of Josh Norris's previous franchise mark of 31, set during the 2019-20 season. At 24, with 202 NHL games already on his resume across stints with the Los Angeles Kings and New York Rangers, Kaliyev is making the kind of argument that front offices cannot easily ignore.

The outburst was compressed into a dizzying two-minute stretch in the first period. Tomas Hamara opened the scoring at 16:18 when Jaimeson Rees fed him a puck from the far corner and he beat Manitoba starter Domenic DiVincentiis with a one-timer to make it 1-0. Then Kaliyev took over. He weaved through the Moose defense with Samuel Bolduc and Riley Kidney credited on the play, his 34th of the season making it 2-0. Forty-two seconds later, Graeme Clarke moved the puck along the blue line and found Kaliyev again: goal No. 35, and three Belleville tallies in just over two minutes of first-period hockey.

The second period went scoreless, though not for lack of Belleville pressure. The Senators put 10 shots on net in the middle frame with seven of them coming from high-danger areas; Manitoba managed eight. Meriläinen turned everything away and gave the offense nothing to protect against.

Philippe Daoust broke any remaining tension just 26 seconds into the third, his 14th of the season assisted by Cam Crotty and Bolduc. The night's punctuation came late, when Kaliyev finished off a feed from Clarke and Daoust on the power play to complete the hat trick. His 36th goal of the season closed the scoring at 5-0.

Meriläinen's shutout was his second of the season and the eighth of his AHL career; he and Kaliyev were both recognized among the game's three stars.

For Manitoba, the result arrived at a particularly damaging moment. The Moose had already dropped six of their last eight games heading into Friday, a slide rooted in a persistent inability to generate offense: they have scored just 151 goals this season, third-fewest in the AHL. A 26-shot output against Meriläinen did nothing to suggest that problem is close to being solved.

Belleville returns to the ice Saturday night at CAA Arena, where the doubleheader with Manitoba wraps up along with the season series. Puck drop is set for 7:00 p.m.