Season Comes to an End for AHL Belleville, Ottawa Senators Top Farm Club

The Belleville Senators were eliminated 3 games to 1 in their best-of-5 AHL North Semifinal with the Cleveland Monsters.

On Friday night in Cleveland, the Belleville Senators were staring down the business end of another elimination game, their second in the past 12 days. This time, they could not save their season, falling 3-1 in both game and series. The loss ended the club's second playoff run in their seven-year history.

Belleville lost a double overtime heartbreaker in Game 3 on Wednesday – the crucial swing game in a 1-1 series. Owen Sillinger was the overtime hero for the Monsters in that game and scored his second straight winning goal on Friday, breaking a 1-1 tie in the second period.

These playoffs were a coming-out party as a pro for Belleville rookie center Stephen Halliday, who was still in school just two months ago. The former Ohio State star scored Belleville's only goal and finished the playoffs with nine points. As the B-Sens call it a season, Halliday currently sits second overall in AHL playoff scoring.

Mads Sogaard continued to look more and more comfortable as a pro and did nothing to take himself out of the running for the title of Ottawa's goalie of the future. That said, Leevi Merilainen reminded the organization that he'd also like a piece of that title. Merilainen was excellent in the Friday loss in his first game since April 20th, giving up two goals on 29 shots.

Head coach David Bell says he was impressed with the growth of his young players.

"You see Stephen Halliday scoring the playoffs, coming in for ten games at the end of the year," Bell told the Belleville Senator Entertainment Network. "Tyler Kleven had a good playoff; Zack Ostapchuk had a good playoff, and so did Mads Sogaard and Leevi Merilainen. So, these guys coming up are going to push for spots next year in Ottawa, I hope. But if not, those guys will take another step next year, and they'll be that much better.

"And the Tyler Bouchers and the Roby Jarventies of the world when they recover from injury. I think they'll have a really good team."

Belleville now heads home, wondering about what might have been. All three Cleveland wins were effectively decided by just one goal. Friday night's game was technically the exception since the Monsters added an empty netter at the end.

Cleveland now moves on to face Syracuse in the next round.