The Cleveland Monsters lost their second and third staright games this weekend as the Belleville Senators came out on top by a combined score of 9-2.
Make that three straight losses for the Cleveland Monsters. Considering their opponent for Friday and Saturday it is hardly that surprising. Belleville is the class of the division while Cleveland is in last place. Things just appeared destined to turn out this way.
Belleville scored on 50% (4/8) of their power play chances over the weekend. This is significantly higher than Cleveland’s usual 83.5% penalty kill success rate. The Monsters are usually one of the better teams in the AHL when it comes to this particular area, but not this weekend.
It didn’t really matter who was in goal for the Monsters, Belleville was able to score quite easily on both and not on that many shots either. Brad Thiessen allowed 5 goals on 20 shots Friday and Veini Vehvilainen allowed 4 goals on 21 shots Saturday.
It was just an all around bad weekend for Cleveland and sometimes those happen. Especially when Columbus has injuries of their own and have to recall players from Cleveland on a consistent basis. Ryan MacInnis appeared or the Monsters in their loss Friday prior to being recalled Saturday by the Blue Jackets. With so much change it is hard to put out a consistent group of players and even harder to win. Just the nature of being the AHL affiliate of an NHL team plagued with injures.
