Ottawa Senators Prospect Update and Belleville Recap - February 14th

Forwards

Up front Ottawa had a few goals and assists to report this week but no one player really stole the show. Owen Beckner continued his sneaky good season with a couple more assists for the Storm while former Tri-City forward Cam O'Neill scored his third goal of the season.

Belleville's all-star forward Angus Crookshank again led the way this past week with a goal, two assists, and six shots. Zack Ostapchuk and Egor Sokolov each had a healthy four shots with the latter also adding an assist. Obviously the big highlight goes to Oskar Pettersson who scored his first AHL goal. Naturally Pettersson will have a lot of eyes on him as fellow winger Roby Järventie will miss the remainder of the season with a knee injury.

Defence

Among Belleville's defenders, no one really had a week to write home about but each of Tyler Kleven and Lassi Thomson had an assist as the BSens split their weekend series with Utica. All-Star Max Guenette had a whopping ten shots through two games and also uncharacteristically spent some time in the penalty box.

Ottawa's OHL-representatives had a relatively quiet week with just two points between the four of them as Jorian Donovan and Djibril Toure each had an assist. The very same defenders led the way in shots this past week with three and six respectively. Don't let this detract from the fact that this group has had a great season collectively to date with three of the four likely playoff-bound in the spring.

Goaltender

I've opted to take the easy way out here and give everyone a participation ribbon because none of Ottawa's goaltending prospects had a bad week by any means. Kevin Mandolese didn't get to play this last week because he needed to hold a roster spot in Ottawa to keep the Sens cap-compliant. Leevi Meriläinen won his one decision in Belleville stopping 29 of 33 while Mads Søgaard lost his only game for Belleville despite stopping 29 of 30. It happens. Vladimir Nikitin made two appearances this past week for Chilliwack and won his one decision stopping 52 of 54 along the way. Kevin Reidler faced just 18 shots in his lone appearance this past week and stopped 17 to win said game. Solid stuff, gang.

Belleville Update

The Belleville Senators are streaking again, but back in a positive way having won four of their last five contests. This past weekend they welcomed the Utica Comets for a back-to-back, in which the two teams split the points.

On Friday, Utica took down the Senators 2-0 in an incredibly tight contest. The game's first goal didn't come until the 5:20 mark of the second period, while the second goal was an empty netter late in the game. The two teams differed in shots by just one, and in goals with a goaltender by just one. Where Belleville left money on the table was in their special teams, as they went 0 for 3 on the powerplay. Just one successful stint on the man advantage would've completely changed this game where Mads Søgaard stopped 29 of the 30 shots he faced.

On Saturday, the two teams must have felt guilty for the lack of scoring for Friday's crowd as they combined for nine in a 5-4 Belleville victory. The game started with a milestone goal, as Oskar Pettersson netted his first North American professional goal.

The most entertaining part about Saturday's game was how things progressed - as the two teams exchanged goals until Belleville finally broke the streak with their 4th and 5th of the game. It was either tied or a one goal lead for 52 minutes in this one, the folks at CAA Arena definitely got their money's worth.

Our final game of the week happened just last night, with Belleville taking down the Crunch by a score of 6-5. It wasn't exactly the goaltending match you'd want to see, with Søgaard posting an .828, but fortunately for the Senators, Zack MacEwan made the most of his first game back with the club with a pair of third period goals. One of which being pretty, pretty sweet.

The Senators return to action Friday night against Toronto before heading to Utica for a Saturday night tilt with the Comets.

Stats