The Manchester Monarchs narrowly escaped with two points after a 6-5 shootout victory over the Binghamton Senators last night.

"We played two and a half outstanding periods of hockey and then shut it down for some unknown reason," Monarchs Coach Mark Morris said. "We took two points the hard way. (Jeff) Zatkoff was stellar in the net.

Manchester led 5-1 after Justin Azevedo scored at the 3:34 mark of the third period. The Monarchs still led by that score with just over nine minutes left before the Senators scored four times to tie the game.

"All the good things we did in the game negated the less-than-stellar play coming down the stretch, but the Senators put in a real gutsy effort," Morris said. "Young teams are going to go through these moments and thankfully we came away with two points."

The game came down to a shootout and Azevedo scored the game-winner for the Monarchs as goaltender Zatkoff stopped four of five Binghamton shooters. Denis Hamel was the lone shooter to beat Zatkoff in the shootout. Manchester's Oscar Moller also scored in the shootout as Senators netminder Mike Brodeur denied centers Andrei Loktionov, Corey Elkins and Juraj Mikus.

The Monarchs fell behind 1-0 at the 9:01 mark of the first period, then scored three goals before the end of the period to go ahead 3-1. Elkins scored at 10:07, with assists from Viatcheslav Voynov and Andrew Campbell. Brandon Segal made it 2-1 at 12:40 with assists from Marc-Andre Cliche and Gabe Gauthier. Then Elkins scored again at 18:50 with assists from Kevin Westgarth and Campbell.

Moller made it 4-1 at 6:22 of the second period, converting a feed from John Zeiler. Azavedo's goal to make it 5-1 was assisted by Elkins and Joe Piskula.

Binghamton's four third-period goals were scored by Denis Hamel (at 10:59), Kaspars Daugavins (at 12:08), Martin St. Pierre (at 15:21) and Craig Schira (at 19:09) on the power play.

Manchester (11-4-1-1) leads the Atlantic Division with 24 points. Binghamton (7-7-2-1) is tied for fourth place in the East Division with 17 points.