Springfield Penalty Kill Dominates With Two Shorthanded Goals in 5-3 Win

Two shorthanded goals in the first 5:31 of play flipped Belleville's power plays right back in their faces, and the Springfield Thunderbirds never looked back, walking out of CAA Arena with a 5-3 win over the Belleville Senators on Saturday night.

The first period had Springfield jump out to an early lead with two shorthanded goals. The first came off a turnover in the Senators' offensive zone, where Chris Wagner jumped ahead and fed the puck into the middle for Aleksanteri Kaskimaki, who buried it to put Springfield up 1-0. The second shorthanded marker saw Dylan Peterson take away a pass and rush in on a breakaway to score his tenth goal, making it 2-0. Both goals came with Belleville holding the man advantage, turning what should have been momentum-building power plays into a 2-0 hole before the game had barely begun.

Just before the eight-minute mark, Belleville struck back. Tyler Boucher snuck in his second goal in two games off a wraparound to cut the deficit to 2-1. Late in the frame, the Thunderbirds restored their two-goal lead when Julien Gauthier sent a backhand pass to the net that went right to Juraj Pekarcik, making it a 3-1 game.

The second period was where Springfield truly put it away. Graeme Clarke drove the puck in and dropped it off for Olle Lycksell, who found Samuel Bolduc to pull Belleville within one, but the Thunderbirds responded just fifty-five seconds later. A quick passing play started by Pekarcik, who picked up his second point of the evening, set up Peterson to slide one home and make it 4-2. Less than four minutes later, Wagner forced a turnover in the neutral zone and sent the puck ahead to Dillon Dube for a breakaway, where Dube netted his twelfth goal to end the second period at 5-2.

Belleville dominated play in the third, outshooting the Thunderbirds 15-1 and adding a late tally on the power play, when Carter Yakemchuk reached ten goals in his rookie season with assists from Philippe Daoust and Xavier Bourgault. It was too little, too late.

Wagner, 34, now sits alone atop Springfield's scoring list with 22 goals and 37 points in 56 games after a night that saw him generate the opening shorthanded sequence and add another helper in the second. His fingerprints were all over the game sheet.

With the loss, Belleville has now dropped three in a row. The defeat wraps up the season series between the two clubs at 1-1-0-0, and it leaves Belleville with a lifetime 5-11-1-0 record against the Thunderbirds. The Sens get five days off before returning home to face the Manitoba Moose, but the special teams crisis they ignored for the better part of 5:31 on Saturday night will be a much harder thing to shake.