The Bears took this ice tonight for their first midweek home game of the season, as they welcomed Lehigh Valley for the first of then matchups this year. Hershey came into the night looking to win their fifth straight, after sweeping last weekends three games in three nights stretch, which you can read about here.

Lehigh Valley was themselves looking for their first win in five games, having failed to get into the win column since their opening night win.

First Period

It was a back and forth and even start to the game, with both teams trading early scoring opportunities. It would be the Phantoms capitalizing first. With just over 14 minutes left in the period, some strong zone possession for Lehigh Valley was capitalized on by Helge Grans. Grans was left open when coming down from the blue line and made no mistake on his grade A chance right in front of the net.

The teams would trade power play opportunities that neither would capitalize on, but the Bears would take the next chance. Jake Massie had a shot that had eyes as it would beat Cal Petersen high to tie up this game at one.

The teams would trade penalties again before the end of the period, but it would stay at one apiece heading into the second frame.

Second Period

The Bears would start out this period on the front foot, dominating the first five minutes as they had 5 shots to the Phantoms 0. But after that early barrage was slowed by Cal Petersen and his glove hand, the game settled back into the back and forth affair the first was.

Real action wasn’t seen until Brennan Saulnier drew a hook going to the net, putting the Bears on the power play. But, it would be cut short, after Ivan Miroshnichenko took a hooking penalty, which would put the Phantoms on the power play for a 1:30 after the 4-on-4 ended. This would be where the Phantoms would get their best opportunities as they had the Bears hemmed in their own zone for much of the power play. Hunter Shepard made some ten-bell saves though and kept the score at 1-1.

Cal Petersen would make some ten-bell saves of his own as the Bears went on the power play late in the period, keeping the score at 1-1 heading into the third.

Third Period

The third would start out much like the second, with the Bears on the front foot and with the lion’s share of chances.

Once again though, it wouldn’t matter. Lehigh Valley stayed firm and with just over 10 minutes to go in the period, Jacob Gaucher capitalized on a broken play and roofed one past Hunter Shepard to put the Phantoms up 2-1.

Lehigh would go on lockdown from there, and shut the door on Hershey. The Bears had a few opportunities to tie back up the game, but Cal Petersen kept most of the chances out and the Phantoms ended up with the 2-1 win.

Postgame Thoughts

Head Coach Todd Nelson: “It was a snoozefest out there tonight. Both teams came out flat and they just ended up scoring one more goal than us… we didn’t play bad tonight, we just played slow.”- on tonight’s game.

Brennan Saulnier: “It’s been good so far, they do what they do. Two big, strong guys who get on the forecheck and are strong physically. They log a lot of kill time. So, I’m just trying to gel with them as quickly as I can and bring what I do [with] speed, energy on the forecheck and creating offensively. Two really good players, two really good guys and it’s been working well so far.”- on working with Riley Sutter and Matt Strome.