BELLEVILLE, ON — The Springfield Thunderbirds (12-11-2-1) could not keep pace with an energized Belleville Senators (13-7-0-4) team in a 5-2 loss on Saturday night at CAA Arena. 

Getting the start on the eve of his trip to Switzerland to join Team Canada for the Spengler Cup, Colten Ellis was forced to be strong and busy from the opening puck drop, as Belleville threw 11 shots on the Springfield net in the opening 10 minutes, with the T-Birds goalie coming up with one impressive save after another.

Despite being heavily outshot, Springfield's offense finally cashed in to record an opening goal for the first time on the road trip. Playing at forward due to injuries to the forward group, Hunter Skinner found his way to the edge of the blue paint and shuffled a loose puck toward the goal, where Dylan Peterson chipped it past former T-Bird Malcolm Subban's glove to make it a 1-0 lead for Springfield at 6:57. 

The Senators refused to let up, and they finally broke through at the 16:04 mark. Jeremy Davies crept into the play from the blue line and moved in with a point-blank chance on Ellis. While the T-Bird netminder slid to make an athletic save, the rebound sat in the slot area for Wyatt Bongiovanni, who stashed it into an open net to tie the game.

Just 1:27 later, Belleville had its first lead of the night as former T-Bird Matthew Highmore took a centering pass from Hayden Hodgson and unselfishly made an extra feed to Oskar Pettersson, who put it upstairs past Ellis to make it a 2-1 Belleville lead after 20 minutes.

21 seconds into period two, a fortuitous bounce gave Belleville a 3-1 lead as Xavier Bourgault was in the right place to pound a loose puck by Ellis after it ricocheted to the net front from behind the net. 

The T-Birds defense stabilized for the remainder of the second, but the Springfield offensive attack could not muster anything more on Subban and the Belleville defense, and the 3-1 deficit carried into the third. 

Jan Jenik added to the Belleville lead at 5:33 of the third when he took a drop pass Zack MacEwen and fired a low snapper past Ellis to make it a 4-1 game. Ellis finished his busy night with 31 stops.

With Ellis on the bench for an extra skater, the T-Birds finally broke through again with a power play connection from Aleksanteri Kaskimaki with 2:17 remaining in regulation. Still, it proved too little too late, as Stephen Halliday added an empty-netter in the final half-minute to round out the scoring in the Belleville win.

The T-Birds complete their five-game road trip with a 3:00 p.m. matchup on Sunday afternoon in Laval against the Rocket.

Interested 2024-25 season ticket members can call (413) 739-GOAL (4625) or visit www.SpringfieldThunderbirds.com to learn how to become a regular at the Thunderdome.