For the Binghamton Senators, Friday night’s game against the Toronto Marlies just started out on the wrong foot.

Barely one minute into the first period, Binghamton’s Grant Potulny and Toronto’s Ben Ondrus picked a fight that saddled Potulny with a whopping 17 minutes of bench time for instigating, fighting and misconduct. His teammate Tomas Malec was whistled at the same time for cross-checking, and the five-on-three power play resulted in a Toronto goal 30 seconds later.

The rest of the first period went downhill from there, largely because the Senators were left shorthanded. Kris Newbury scored Toronto’s second goal at 16:13 and Binghamton managed just five shots on goal the entire period.

“We had a terrible first period,” said center Steve Martins. “Our start was slow and we were taking penalties for unfortunate errors in our zone.”

Things picked up for the B-Sens after Denis Hamel took advantage of a power-play opportunity to score 6:52 into the second period, off assists from Martins and Brandon Bochenski. Unfortunately the momentum wasn’t enough to keep Toronto from scoring again, as the Marlies tallied their third goal with three minutes left in the second period.

Binghamton was desperate in the third period, going as far as pulling goalie Kelly Guard in favor of a sixth attacker, but Charlie Stephens’ goal, with 45 seconds left in the game, only cut the deficit to 3-2 and the Senators didn’t have enough time to score the equalizer.

“Early on it was a team defensive breakdown,” Guard said. “We came back in the second and the third, but it was a case of too little, too late.”

The Senators have been impressive against the Marlies this season, as they beat them three times already by scores of 5-4, 4-2 and 3-0. Martins accounted Friday night’s breakdown to the slow start.

“We can’t let teams get up on us, especially in our own building with our own fans and small ice,” he said. “We should make teams not want to play here.”

Binghamton didn’t fare much better in Saturday night’s contest against Hamilton, which ended in a 3-2 shootout win for the Bulldogs. Jeff Heerema started Binghamton off with a power-play goal 4:22 into the game, but the Senators didn’t score again until the end of the third period, when Flip Novak tied the game at two. Billy Thompson let in three out of five Hamilton shots in the shootout, while Stephens had the sole goal for Binghamton.

After a disappointing week, Binghamton made an impressive comeback against the third-place Bridgeport Sound Tigers Sunday. Led by Bochenski, who had a hat trick, the B-Sens closed out the first period with a 4-0 lead. Danny Bois had the fourth goal of the period, at 19:25.

Thompson allowed only one Bridgeport goal during the second period, while Hamel and Stephens each added one goal apiece. Bridgeport threatened to take the lead with a four-goal rally during the third, but the Senators held on for a 6-5 win.

Binghamton travels to Syracuse to play the Crunch Saturday, and will return home to host Manchester Sunday at 5 p.m.