Bears respond to game one setback to even series

By: John  Sparenberg
jsheynow@gmail.com

Who knows what all of the reasons were for the Hershey Bears coughing up a two-goal lead last night in squandering game one of their Calder Cup playoff series against the Bridgeport Sound Tigers at Webster Bank Arena in double overtime, 3-2.

Special teams could be blamed, as each of the Sound Tigers' goals were struck on the power play, while the Bears went 0-for-3 and shot themselves in the foot on each of their chances, as a result not making the home club team exert precious, valuable energy, both in that game and later in the series.

But the Bears were having no part of excuses on Saturday night, grinding out a 2-0 win to even the the series behind a brilliant 39-save shutout performance from Vitek Vanecek, and getting goals from their top two marksmen, Riley Barber and Mike Sgarbossa.

It's important to not get too high emotionally after an exhilarating win, such as the Bears game two in, and not get too low after disappointing setbacks like their game one loss. The fact of the matter is, if you have another spring game to play, there is still hope to capture the crown.

With that in mind, Bears bench boss took no chances that the message would not get through to his players entering game two, taking it upon himself to convey the desperate, but not dire, situation his club faced after dropping the opener.

"We had a good conversation today about yesterday. I didn't think that was our best at all, and it was important for us to respond in game two of a short series. I just wanted to make sure that guys realized the urgency level that we needed to have tonight, and I thought that did great responding and playing at a real high level," said Carbery, whose club scored both of their goals off quick transitions from offense to defense.

Unlike game one where the Sound Tigers controlled most of the play from the opening faceoff and had the Bears on their heels early and throughout the night, tonight the Bears brought it all, with everyone buying in, and the results are obvious.

"We were skating tonight, moving the puck well, and we were way hungrier in the offensive zone. There were a lot of areas where it wasn't that the guys didn't want to do it last night,  we just weren't as sharp, and tonight we hit the ground running from the start of the game. Obviously they pushed when we got up by a couple, putting it on us for the last 20 minutes, but we did enough to hang on."

Chris McCarthy, a late season addition to the Bears from the ECHL, and a player who is a skating testament to a guy who packs a lunch pail when he comes to the rink, is a player that Carbery and his staff obviously like, evidenced by putting him into the playoff lineup over Capitals' property players.

"He came late in the year and we were looking for some help down the middle, and he got an opportunity to play, and he ran with it. We liked the way he played in those last two games of the regular season, and we thought he earned a chance to play in game one, and he played well (scoring the first goal of the series), and has been great for us." 

McCarthy, a Keystone state native, has been a force in all zones by using his sizable frame to muscle away loose pucks from the opposition, but he also has an offensive upside, averaging 20-goals a season in the ECHL in the last three campaigns. He put that soft touch on display in game one by picking the top corner last night to garner the first goal of the series. And while it's unlikely that the Bears' goaltending situation will require Carbery to put the pads on him, he displayed good form early in the third turning back a shot while covering for Vanacek who scrambled to get back in his crease after turning the puck over.

Now it's a best of three series as the locale shifts back to Hershey for games three and four, with the Sound Tigers holding a commanding 91-65 advantage in shots on goal.  However, that's not a stat that concerns Carbery at this point, but it's certainly one that his charges can change if they continue the masterful puck possession game they played on Saturday.

"Generally, I thought their shots were a little bit elevated tonight for both sides. I though that both teams, even when there wasn't really an opportunity, they were just throwing it on net. But we don't look at it from a target number; we look at breaking it down from where those shots are from, are they carrying the play, are we hemmed up in the defensive zone, or are we not doing enough up top to block shots to get into the shot lanes, stuff like that."

Notes-Travis St. Denis sat out his one game suspension for his hit on Aaron Ness the previous evening.

Liam O'Brien returned to the Hershey lineup after serving a three game suspension for a hit against the Hartford Wolf Pack on April 12th.

Carey Carries P-Bruins To Overtime Win

By: John Sparenberg

A shoulder injury that required former Hershey Bear Paul Carey to undergo the knife cut short his first season with the Chocolate and White a few years ago, but on Saturday night in Providence at the Dunkin' Donuts Center he carried his current club, the Providence Bruins, to an overtime victory over the Bears by shouldering the scoring load with a pair of late goals.

The Bruins carried a 1-0 lead into the first intermission, a lead that could have been a lot wider if not for some spectacular goaltending by Ilya Samsonov, who stopped 11 salvos in the frame, including a pair of stops within a matter of seconds, the first being a sensational toe save on Bruins captain Jordan Szwarz, and the second a sprawling effort that kept Karson Kuhlman from lighting the lamp.

Riley Barber, who established a new career high the previous night scoring by scoring the Bears' first goal, did the same honor again, tying the game at 1-1 early in the second period on a delayed penalty to Carey. Barber's tally had it's origins in the Bears defensive zone when Carey hooked down Mike Sgarbossa. Falling to the ice, Sgarbossa slid the puck to Barber, who realizing the impending situation, calmly passed the puck back into his own zone to defenseman Aaron Ness, who also showed no sense of urgency and retreated behind his own net as the Bears began their attack. Jayson Megna put a shot towards the net that a crossing Liam O'Brien deflected, but it never made it to the net, instead bouncing to Barber who banked goal number 28 on the season.

A bad bounce power play goal gave the Bruins another one-goal lead, but Barber was at it again before the end of the period, outracing a Bruins defenseman to a loose puck just inside the Province zone, and then brilliantly shielding off a defender to tie the game at 16:45 by beating P-Bruins netminder Dan Vladar through the five hole.

Megna, who missed a few golden opportunities on Friday, finally found the back of the net midway through the third period, wristing a shot from just inside the blueline by Vladar to give the Bears a 3-2 lead, a lead that held up until a defensive mix-up on the penalty kill allowed Carey to camp out in front of Samsonov, whom he beat with a slick skate-to-stick move to tie the game. 

 In overtime, the trio of Szwarz, Connor Clifton, and Carey combined made quick work of the Bears, with Carey capping off the game after receiving a pass from Clifton by buzzing a wrist shot that buzzed by the blocker of Samsonov, following a center ice faceoff win by Szwarz.

Bears Struggling to Succeed 

Thus far the Hershey Bears’ 2017-18 season can be summed up in three words, surging and struggling.

Training camp injuries to both last season’s number one and number two goalies, Pheonix Copley and Vitek Vanecek, both unforeseen when camp started, meant that bench boss Troy Mann’s charges, already thin in the defensive area, would be stretched even further without the services of that talented tandem for a few weeks.

“Everybody knows that Copley had a pretty significant injury in game four of the Providence series (an injury that shelved him for the remainder of the playoffs), but he came into training camp and everything was great, but unfortunately at the end of camp he tweaked that same injury. They wanted to make sure they got it right, there was no surgery involved in the summer, but we had to be very patient in order to get him back to 100%. As for Vitek, it was just a tough luck kind of injury. He pulled his hamstring in the first preseason game in Jersey and once I got back to Hershey, Dr. Black pretty much said hamstring injuries are a minimum of six weeks, and sure enough it was just over six weeks before he was healthy enough for us to send him down to South Carolina to get a couple of rehab starts in.”

With Parker Milner and rookie Adam Carlson trusted to “tend the twine”, backed up by the relatively inexperienced blueline bunch, the Bears struggled from the start, beginning with a sizable 7-2 road setback at the hands of the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, an encounter in which goaltender Milner was victimized for six goals. That was followed up by a pair of home ice losses, one in regulation and one in a shootout to the Phantoms, and just like that the Bears found themselves without a win in three ties to open their historic 80^th American Hockey League campaign.   

“First and foremost, I don’t know how many AHL or NHL teams for that matter could survive without their number one or number two goalies, so that certainly played a major factor.  We were hoping to have Copley and Vanecek to start the season, knowing that we were going in with three rookies on the blueline, and actually that turned into four when Madison Bowey only lasted one game (before being called up to the Washington Capitals due to an injury on the Caps’ defense) . That all combined to play a part in It”, said Mann, whose club was winless in their first four outings of the season.

Mann continued, “Adam Carlson was certainly a pleasant surprise in terms of the couple of starts that he got, but there were some inconsistencies in Parker Milner’s game, mixed that with seven or eight rookies on the roster, specifically on the back end, and we knew there were going to be some growing pains.”

Like many other AHL coaches, Mann has lamented over the years about the abundance of games his club has against division rivals, but he had to be happy when we peered closely into the Bears’ schedule when it was released this past summer. Sure, it was still dotted with frequent appearances against Keystone State neighbors the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins and Lehigh Valley Phantoms, but it also featured a three game early season Midwest road swing to Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, and Rockford, and the freedom of the road, although it only paid off with one win, in Grand Rapids, Mann says his club benefited in tangible ways from the experience.

“It was a very difficult road trip as it was basically three games in two and a half days with time changes and some tough travel. But we were able to get in there two days early, with the big amount of rookies on the team, and do some team bonding and get in some practices. I think that any time that you are able to do those things as a team, especially when you have a lot of new guys, it’s important. I still think that even though we only won one game on the trip, I think that trip played a big part in getting our guys together.”

After returning home from the Midwest trip, the Bears suffered another tough setback, on the road against the baby Pens. But, that was followed up by a pair of home ice wins, and the Bears’ fortunes appeared to be changing with the back-to-back wins, and the prospect of Copley returning to action in the next game, a road outing against the Rochester Americans.

In Rochester, the Bears bolted out to 3-0 lead, and Copley, who was perfect in the first period in his return to action, but in the middle stanza, he succumbed to six goals in a 19-shot barrage, and that left Mann with a bit of a dilemma.

“Anytime you have multiple pucks going in in one period, whether it’s to change the momentum or because of indifferent play it (pulling the goalie) always goes through your mind.  But he had missed some significant time, and hadn’t played a game in about five weeks, and I thought it was important that he fight through it, and he did (allowing no goals in the remainder of regulation and overtime).  I didn’t want to pull him and then have him travel five hours back to Hershey and start the next night.  My message to the team after the second period was that we could win the game 7-6, I just felt it was one of these games, and we were able to get two goals in the third before losing the shootout, which is pretty much a crapshoot.”

Mann added, “We also had a three-in-three that weekend, and we had a plan in place to get him in two games, and if not, we were actually going to play him one, and give Carlson and Vitek one as well.” 

Copley has followed up the rocky Rochester outing with three straight wins, allowing only a total four goals in the process.

Vanecek, on the other hand, had an easy night in his AHL season debut on November 12 against the baby Pens at Giant Center, easy at least in the fact that he only faced a total of twelve shots. But the rust in his armor from the injury showed, as he managed only eight saves in suffering a defeat that saw the Bears score just one goal in support of him.

The Bears offense is best characterized by the “surging and struggling” saying. Nearly half of the clubs 40 non-shootout goals this season (18, or 45%), have been scored on the power play, and when that extra man unit is surging and they strike at least once on the power play, they are 6-3-0-2 and score an average of 3.36 goals per game, but when they fail to strike with the extra man, they have yet to a win a game, going 0-4, and scoring only a total of four goals in those contests.

“It’s absolutely a concern”, said Mann, in response to whether his team’s reliance on the power play is worrisome. “Our skill set this year is certainly not as deep as in years past, especially when you compare it to two years ago when an influx of rookies came in like (Travis) Boyd and (Riley) Barber and those types of players turned pro. We’ve talked about it, and obviously we’d like to generate some more five-on-five goals, as it forces your special teams have to be good on a night-to-night basis, unlike last year when we could get by on nights when the power play wasn’t on.”

“If you look at the league numbers, we are in the top ten on both special teams units, and I think for us to continue to have success that’s going to have to continue. Last year I think we finished second in scoring in general, and that was also the case the year before, but I just don’t see our team, the way it’s currently constructed, I don’t see that continuing this year. Our scoring has been primarily coming from four of five guys, as evidenced by multiple forwards on the team with pretty low numbers, and that’s just the way it is right now, but it’s still early.”