Whalers Finish First Half With 5-1 Loss to Belleville

BELLEVILLE, Ontario - Daniil Zharkov's goal at 7:29 of the second period snapped a 1-1 tie and the Belleville Bulls went on to defeat the Plymouth Whalers, 5-1, in an Ontario Hockey League game played Saturday night before 2,500 at Yardmen Arena in Belleville, Ontario.

The Whalers (now 22-9-2-1, 47 points) had a five-game winning streak snapped. Plymouth goes into the Christmas Break in first place in the OHL West and second place in the Western Conference race. Belleville broke a four-game losing streak and improves to 20-13-0-0 (second place East Division).

Besides Zharkov's 14th of the year, Belleville received goals from Austen Brassard (14th), Dylan Corson (2nd), Adam Payerl (11th) and Brady Austin (2nd). Malcolm Subban stopped 33-of-34 shots for the Bulls.

Danny Vanderwiel scored the only Plymouth goal, his first in the OHL.

Belleville snapped Plymouth goal tender Matt Mahalak's shutout streak at 93:02 immediately when Brassard scored at 0:48, scoring through traffic on the left side of the post.

The Whalers tied the game at 1-1 on Vanderwiel's first OHL goal at 17:53 of the period. The goal was the result of a good three-way passing play, starting with defenseman Nick Malysa's good pass out of the Plymouth zone to Andy Bathgate in neutral ice. Bathgate carried the puck to the lower rim of the right circle in the Belleville zone and fed it in front to Vanderwiel, who made no mistake.

But Zharkov restored the Belleville lead in the second period, snapping a hard shot from the right circle past Mahalak. Corson scored at 16:45 of the second period to give the Bulls a 3-1 lead, scoring on a scramble at the side of the Plymouth goal.

The Bulls extended the lead in the third period with goals by Payerl at 6:35 and Austin at 9:09.

Belleville outshot Plymouth, 40-34.

Another bright spot for the Whalers was the OHL debut of Mitch Jones, Plymouth's 11th round draft choice from last spring. Jones did not look out of place in the game.

He was able to smile about his OHL debut, even at 3:30 in the morning when the Whalers arrived at Compuware Arena from Belleville.

"I loved it," Jones said about his debut.

Plymouth is off until Wed. Dec. 28 when they host London at 2 p.m. at in the Whalers' annual Kids' Day Game.

AWAY AT WJC: Rickard Rakell (Sweden) and Dario Trutmann (Switzerland) left for the World Junior Championships on Saturday and did not play in the Belleville game, joining Scott Wedgewood (Canada) and Austin Levi and J.T. Miller (United States) as Whalers in the 2012 World Junior Championships.

Darien Ekblad remains with Plymouth as a back-up to Mahalak.

Mitchell Dempsey will play for Ontario in the upcoming World Under-17 Hockey Challenge, which starts right after Christmas.

Sound bytes courtesy of Pete Krupsky and www.plymouthwhalers.com.

PLYMOUTH 5, OSHAWA 0 on Friday.