The Manitoba Moose won their home opener for the first time since returning to Manitoba in 2015.
The Moose earned their first victory of the young season as they defeated the Belleville Senators 2-1 on Friday at Bell MTS Place.
Mason Appleton broke up a 1-1 tie on the powerplay in the third period with his first goal of the season. Seth Griffith scored the only other goal for Manitoba and he also had one assist.
“It was good,” Griffith said. “Get back on the right page. Obviously we didn’t have the best outcomes in Iowa but we wanted to bounce back here. We had three really good practices this week and the guys were working hard, so it was good to see it paid off.”
The Senators had their chances to get the equalizer with a powerplay in the final two minutes with the goalie pulled, but the Moose held them off to improve to 1-2 on the season.
“We’ve seen a lot of guys getting in the way, blocking shots, taking the hits to make plays,” head coach Pascal Vincent said. “These details will make a difference.”
The Moose were coming off back-to-back road losses after getting outscored 12-2 by the Iowa Wild on the opening weekend.
“We came a long way this week,” Appleton said. “It felt good to get the first win tonight.”
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The Moose killed off all six of the Senators’ powerplays and Eric Comrie made 30 stops in goal for the Moose.
“Our team did a really good job of making sure everything stayed to the outside,” Comrie said.
“We did a really good job on our PK (penalty kill) tonight. I think Dubey (Eric Dubois) did a really good job pre-scouting and I think our guys bought in and played the system correctly.”
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Rudolfs Balcers scored the only goal for Belleville.
The Moose were outshot by the Sens 31-30.
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Logan Stanley, Kristian Reichel, Kale Kessy and Emile Poirier were among the scratches for the Moose.
The Moose lost all three of their their previous home openers since moving from St. John’s.
The rematch between the Moose and Senators is set for Saturday at 6:00 pm at Bell MTS Place.