Mann's B-Sens best Bears

By: John Sparenberg

The Hershey Bears scored first in their matchup with the Belleville Senators on Saturday night at Giant Center, but the visitors scored the last three goals to emerge with a 3-1 win.

With the win, the B-Sens gave their bench boss, Troy Mann who previously held the same position with the Bears, his first victory over his former club after three previous setbacks.

The Bears enjoyed a huge territorial advantage in the first period, and also outshot their opponents by a wide margin, 11-1, but only carried a 1-0 lead into the middle frame.

The goal, scored at 6:21, came off the stick of defenseman Eddie Wittchow. After gathering in a pass from Liam O’Brien, Wittchow rifled a rising wrister by the glove hand of Belleville net-minder Joey Daccord, who was making his AHL debut, although he made his professional debut last season in the NHL with the parent club in Ottawa. With the tally, Wittchow became the second Bears defenseman this season to score in their debut, joining Alex Alexeyev, who accomplished the feat on opening night against the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.

O’Brien would go on to factor in the scoring in the second period as well, however, this play resulted in a negative result for his club. After absorbing a hard hit just inside the Belleville defensive zone, O’Brien retaliated by delivering a cross-check to a Senators player, and that action resulted in a five minute penalty in addition to a game misconduct sentence.

Initially the Bears penalty killing unit was able to withstand the Senators’ surge, holding them off the scoreboard for three-plus minutes, but then a hooking infraction to defenseman Erik Burgdoerfer gave them a five-on-three advantage, on which they capitalized on to tie the game. Subsequently, they then took the lead on a traditional power play that was struck with time still left on O’Brien’s penalty.

The Bears, forced to juggle their lines with the loss of their alternate captain, had few quality opportunities in the remainder of the game after falling behind, sans a few on their own five-on-three advantage, and an empty net goal with 1:14 left in the game sealed the deal for the “Boys from Belleville”, adding an exclamation point to their victory.

Notes-Kody Clark registered his first point as a pro by assisting on the Wittchow goal.

Bruins best Bears in Turkey Shootout

By: John Sparenberg

In the spirit of the traditional feasting on Thankgsiving, the Hershey Bears and the Providence Bruins engaged in a goal-scoring smorgasbord at Giant Center last night, with the P-Bruins emerging with a 7-6 shootout win after the feasting ended.

Things started out well for the Bears when they took a 1-0 lead on their second man advantage of the game when Mike Sgarbossa entered the Providence crease through a wide open back door and deposited the puck into a yawning cage at 11:45. Matt Moulson collected the primary helper on the strike, mucking it up in the crease and creating chaos for the Providence defense before sliding a pass over to Sgarbossa.

Brian Pinho, who pinged a shot off the post on a penalty shot attempt against P-Bruins net-minder Max Lagace in the first period, changed his approach early in the second, and it paid dividends. He beat Lagace through the five-hole at 52 seconds and started a second stanza scoring frenzy that saw seven goals registered.

Only seven seconds after Pinho’s tally, and while the fans were still celebrating, Joe Snively slid a pretty pass from Garrett Pilon through the legs of a sprawling Lagace to give the home team a 3-0 lead.

At that point, the visitors may have been down, but they certainly were not out.  They scored a pair of goals less than a minute apart, the second of which was very suspect and originated from the bottom of the faceoff circle from a bad angle, but it still somehow eluded Bears’ keeper Pheonix Copley.

But the Bears answered back when defenseman Erik Burgdoerfer benefited from a clean offensive zone faceoff win by Philippe Maillet to notch his second goal of the year, only to see Bruins’ defenseman Urho Vaakanainen, who victimized the Bears for a pair of goals last Sunday in Providence, respond with another to make it 4-3 at 10:36.

There would be one more goal before the buzzer sounded to end the middle stanza, and that came off the stick of Maillet, who on this historic night which saw the Bears play game number 6,000 in franchise history, added some personal history by picking up his 100^th career point on the lamp lighter.

Early in the third, former Bear Paul Carey made it a one-goal Bears lead for the fourth time in the contest, cashing in on his own rebound by squeezing the puck under Copley’s pad, all while situated below the goal line. 

 

After Carey's caper, the score remained 6-5 until the visitors responded with a pair of quick goals of their own as Jakub Lauko and Oskar Steen scored goals only 23 seconds apart to take the lead for the first time.

However, Snively’s second snipe of the game, courtesy of a smooth setup by Sgarbossa, who drew Lagace towards him before sliding a pass under him to Snively for the slam dunk, tied it at 16:08, which sent the game into overtime. Subsequently in the shootout, Lauko netted the decisive goal in the individual skills competition.

Notes-

The Bears scratched Kale Kessy, Riley Sutter, Colby Williams, Eddie Wittchow, Bobby Nardella and Chris McCarthy, all healthy, in addition to the injured trio of Lucas Johansen, Steve Whitney, and Bobby Nardella.

Matt Weis, recently recalled from South Carolina, made his Hershey debut centering the fourth line.