After a somewhat inconsistent start to their season, the Binghamton Senators had their most successful weekend of the season, winning back to back games against the Phantoms and the Rochester Americans on Saturday night.
The latest three game winning streak comes at a good time for the BSens who have a busy weekend ahead, with games on Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. Luke Richardson’s team has posted a 7-4-1-1 record overall, good enough for second place in the AHL’s East Division.
On Friday night, Ben Bishop got the start for the BSens and put together his best outing of the season, stopping 33 of 35 shots on route to a 5-2 win over Adirondack. Binghamton goals came from Grant, Eckford, Cannone, Zibanejad (his first of the season) and Mark Stone.
It was nice to see Mika Zibanejad finally end his goalless drought. Zibanejad was actually named the game’s first star on Friday night. Friday's game featured a line brawl with both Grant and Eckford getting into impressive tilts.
Less than 24 hours later, it was Robin Lehner leading the charge, as he stopped 49 of 51 Rochester attempts, earning him first star honours. You never want to read too much into these regular season games but it was nice to see Lehner respond with a strong outing of his own a night after Bishop played his best game of the season.
Hopefully those two can continue to push each other moving forward.
Saturday’s goals came from Derek Grant, who had a pair, and Shane Prince, who picked up his first goal as a pro hockey players.
All in all, a great weekend for the Binghamton Senators.
- Little new to report on the CBA front. After last week’s suggestion that the two sides take a couple weeks off, there was suddenly word that negotiations would continue today in New York. Talking is obviously better than not talking but obviously there is still a ton of work to be done. Interesting read here where Gary Lawless of the Winnipeg Free Press sits down with Gary Bettman to get his read on the current negotiations.
- Jared Cowen underwent surgery over the weekend with the initial recovery time set at 6-8 months. Tough luck for Cowen and a significant blow to the Sens blueline, should the NHL end up playing a shorterned season. Ottawa’s blueline of Karlsson, Phillips, Methot, Gonchar, Lundin, Borowiecki and Benoit looks fairly thin on paper and would need a couple guys to step up in a big way.
