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IceCaps Drop New Year's Eve Game to Senators

December 31, 2012 - American Hockey League (AHL)
St. John's IceCaps News Release


Four different players scored for the Binghamton Senators as they defeated the St. John's IceCaps 4-2 in a New Year's Eve tilt in New York Monday night.

Mike Hoffman, Shane Prince, Derek Grant and Mark Stone (into an empty net) gave the Senators their 19th victory of the season.

For the IceCaps it was Maxime Macenauer scoring early and Paul Postma late, as the club finished its tough eight-game road trip on a losing note.

Coming off the team's biggest victory of the season Saturday against the Syracuse Crunch, the IceCaps came out ready to play, with early pressure on the Senators and goalie Ben Bishop.

Binghamton took two penalties 23 seconds apart in the first and the IceCaps capitalized. After tremendous pressure, puck movement and several great chances, Macenauer scored his seventh goal of the season past big Ben Bishop in the Senators net to give St. John's a 1-0 lead. Jason Jaffray got the puck back to the point to Postma, who decided not to shoot and found Macenauer on his off wing. The Laval native roofed it to put the IceCaps on the board.

Ben Maxwell appeared to give the IceCaps a 2-0 lead with a beautifully-placed snapshot from the top of the faceoff circle. However, the goal was called back because of a play which occurred in the IceCaps zone. Derek Meech retrieved the puck but collided with a Senators player. As the puck moved to the Binghamton end, Maxwell took a nice feed from Machacek and scored what looked to be his third of the season. However, after a discussion amongst the officials, the goal was waved off, and Meech was given a four-minute high-sticking penalty.

The Sens got that goal back on the power-play two minutes later. Hoffman hammered home a nifty pass from Jakob Silfverberg to knot the score with 51 seconds remaining in the opening period. That sent the teams to the dressing room all even at one apiece.

Twenty minutes of play in the second period didn't change a thing. No goals and just a minor penalty to the IceCaps, which they successfully killed off.

Binghamton jumped in front at 7:11 of the third period, when the puck took a lucky bounce off an IceCaps player. With the IceCaps trying to clear the puck, it bounced to Cole Schneider, who fed Prince all alone in front of Pasquale. Prince made no mistake and the Sens took a 2-1 lead.

Then with the IceCaps on the power play, Derek Grant streaked down the right wing and snapped a shot past Pasquale to make it 3-1 Binghamton. The goal was Grant's fourth short-handed of the season, tops in the AHL.

Pasquale kept his club in the game, however, with a highlight reel save off Stephane DaCosta. With the Sens pressing, a nice passing play led to a DaCosta scoring opportunity. But Pasquale dove across the net to deny the chance, and keep the goal deficit to two.

But with Pasquale on the bench in favour of an extra attacker, Mark Stone fired the puck into an empty net to seal the win for Binghamton.

Even Paul Postma's goal with one second remaining in the game couldn't dull the pain of the loss, as the team fell to 15-18-0-1 but finished its road trip at 4-4-0-0.

The club now returns to St. John's to face the Manchester Monarchs this weekend for the start of a brief four-game home stand. Catch all the action with play-by-play broadcaster Brian Rogers at stjohnsicecaps.com and 930 AM, or watch online at ahllive.com.

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