The Belleville Senators and their drive to make the 2026 Calder Cup race officially ran out of track in Laval this weekend.

The Sens (27-33-9, 63 points) earned a split with the North Division leading Rocket, ending their post season hopes on the American Hockey League’s penultimate weekend of the 2025-26 regular season. Belleville escaped Place Bell on Friday with a 7-6 overtime win but came crashing down the following day at the hands of the Rocket by way of a 5-2 defeat.

For the Sens, it’s their second straight campaign without a post-season bid. Belleville last played for a Calder Cup in 2024, losing out to the Cleveland Monsters in the second round.

For a number of the players, Belleville’s elimination from playoff contention comes with a silver lining. A Belleville contingent will be able to join the parent Ottawa Senators as the NHL club prepares for its post season.

On Sunday against the New Jersey Devils, Ottawa iced a lineup including Belleville regulars Cam Crotty, Stephen Halliday and Lassi Thompson as Ottawa deals with a spate of late season maladies. Expect Carter Yakemchuk, Jorian Donovan, Arthur Kaliyev, Xaiver Bourgault to be recalled to Canada’s capital at the end of the AHL campaign if not sooner.

Rough Finish

Belleville got the start they were hoping for on Saturday, scoring a pair of goals to take a 2-0 lead to the dressing room for the first intermission. Tyler Boucher opened the scoring at 12:19 of the first, beating Rocket starter and former Senator Hunter Shepard for his 12th of the season.

Just over three minutes later and with Belleville on the power play, Graeme Clarke added to Belleville’s lead with his 20th of the season. Samuel Bolduc added his second of assist on the Senator’s scoring play.

But that was as close as Belleville would get on this night. Joshua Roy tallied a hat trick including two empty net goals in the last two minutes to end the Senators’ post season hopes. Florian Xhekaj and Alex Belzile both lit the lamp for the hosts in the Laval win.

On Friday, Belleville was trailing 6-5 inside the final minute of play when they turned to their top goal getter to extend their post season hopes.

With netminder Mads Søgaard on the bench for an extra attacker, Mr. Yakemchuk teed up Mr. Kaliyev for the Tashkent, Uzbekistan product’s second of the game and 38th of the season with just 47 seconds left in the contest.

In overtime, the winning solution started an electric drive through the neutral zone by Mr. Kaliyev. Picking up speed across the blue line, the sniper broke in on Laval’s Kaapo Kähkönen, handcuffing the Rocket puck stopper with a shot low to the glove side that trickled over the goal line 87 seconds into the extra session.

The Sens finish up their season this week by hosting Utica on Wednesday and then playing a home-and-home set with Syracuse on Friday and Saturday evenings.

Puck drop on Wednesday and Friday at CAA Arena is 7 p.m.