For the first time all season, the Binghamton Senators won their fourth-straight game on Saturday night when they topped the visiting Rochester Americans by a score of 6-5. Despite the victory,
Binghamton
still sits seven points behind the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, who defeated
Hartford
2-1 tonight, for the last playoff spot in the East Division.
Denis Hamel gave
Binghamton
the early 1-0 lead when he netted his 53rd goal of the season at the 5:20 mark of the first period. Tomas Malec and Jeff Heerema each picked up assists on the goal. With the power-play goal, Hamel is now two away from tying the AHL mark for power-play markers in a season (27) and is only one goal shy of Don Biggs’ 54, which is a Binghamton AHL record.
Heerema then registered his second point of the night with a goal of his own at the 6:13 mark of the opening frame. Malec picked up his second assist and Gregg Johnson was credited with the secondary helper.
But Rochester would claw back, scoring one goal before the end of the first and adding two more in the second to take a 3-2 lead.
Mark Mancari scored the first three goals of the game for the Amerks to record the natural hat-trick. Brandon Smith registered assists on all three of Mancari’s goal. Kamil Kreps picked up the secondary assist on the first and third goal while David Cullen picked up the secondary helper on the middle tally.
Binghamton
then was able to stick in two goals when Steve Martins and Danny Bois scored back-to-back to give the Sens a 4-3 advantage. Bois and Malec assisted on the Martins tally while Martins and Malec picked up the helpers on Bois’ goal.
Greg Jacina then evened things up at the 17:51 mark of the middle frame with his seventh goal of the season. The goal was unassisted and was the only even-strength goal of the contest.
Rochester
picked up a goal early in the third to make it a 5-4 game in favor of the when Jeff Jillson netted his 10th of the season. Clarke MacArthur and Stefan Meyer picked up the helpers on
Rochester
’s fifth goal of the game.
From there, the Sens would not be denied the victory.
Jeff Heerema picked up his second goal and third point of the contest, at the 6:15 mark of the third period, to tie the game at five and Grant Potulny picked up his second game-winner in as many nights to give the B-Sens a 6-5 win. Potulny’s goal extended his point-scoring streak to four games. With an assist on Potulny's marker, Heerema capped off his four-point effort (2g, 2a).
Kelly Guard started in net for
Binghamton
for the third straight game and made 29 saves on 34 shots for his 25 th win of the year. Jean-Marc Pelletier turned away 42 of 48
Binghamton
offerings in the defeat.
In a special teams dominated game, the Sens closed out the night with six goals on 11 man-up chances while the Amerks were 4 for 7.
Binghamton
returns to action on Wednesday night as they will travel south to
Norfolk
,
VA
for two games with the Admirals. Both Wednesday night and Friday night are slated for 7:15p.m start times. | 
