The Manitoba Moose (12-16-0-0) tangled with the North Division’s Belleville Senators (15-11-2-2) on Saturday afternoon at Canada Life Centre for the first of two straight games. Manitoba was coming off a 3-2 defeat against Texas on Friday evening.
Belleville opened the scoring at the 9:04 point of the contest. A good shift of Senators offensive pressure led to a shot through traffic from Donovan Sebrango. Josh Currie was cruising in front and redirected the disc past Collin Delia from the slot. The tally by Currie was the lone goal of the first stanza. Mads Sogaard, making the start for Belleville, made four stops, while Delia ended the frame with four saves of his own as Manitoba trailed 1-0.
Belleville pushed the lead to two 1:38 into the middle period. Belleville won an offensive zone draw and pushed the puck acorss the dot to Graham McPhee. The forward’s shot squeezed past the pads of Delia. The Moose struck back five minutes into the period on the power play. Brad Lambert sent a pass down to Jeffrey Viel. The latter put it into the crease before it hit a stick in front and tumbled up and over Sogaard. Belleville outshot Manitoba to the tune of 14-6 in the middle frame and led 2-1 after 40 minutes of play.
As time ticked down in the third frame, Manitoba pulled Delia in favour of the extra attacker. Despite decent opportunities generated by pressure in front, Belleville was able to keep Manitoba from tying the contest and iced the game with an empty net tally from Egor Sokolov with 19 seconds left. Delia was hit with the loss and ended with 26 stops, while Sogaard captured the road victory and made 15 stops of his own.
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