The Bears are 6-1 in 2025 after winning their fourth straight game, beating Rochester, 5-4. The game was tied, 3-3, with 17:26 left to play, and that sparked a two-goal rally from Jon McDonald and Grant Cruikshank. Rochester tacked on a late goal with 3:10 remaining, but their rally fell short in the eventual 5-4 Hershey win.

Matt Strome scored Hershey’s first goal on assist from Brennan Saulnier, which equalized the game at one apiece in the first period. The Bears found themselves down again in the second, but Chase Priskie’s goal from Luke Philip and Garrett Roe tied the game again, this time at two each.

Ivan Miroshnichenko put the Bears ahead for the first time of the game just a minute, 25 seconds into the middle period. One minute, nine seconds later, that lead was stripped away from Rochester’s Aleksandr Kisakov.

The two-goal rally in the third period from McDonald and Cruikshank was a huge momentum boost for the Bears, putting themselves up by multiple goals for the first time in the game. The two-goal lead began with 9:07 remaining, and was too much for the Americans to battle back from.

Jon McDonald’s third period goal was his first in the AHL, and his assist is just his second. He had one assist in Hershey’s meeting with Lehigh Valley on December 8.

On the goaltending side, Clay Stevenson made his fourth start in a row and tallied 29 saves on 33 shots. The win improves his season to 9-4-2, and five straight wins.

The Bears were outshot 33-30 in the contest, which isn’t all that uncommon on the season. But, Hershey is coming off a 35-15 win in the shot tally in Friday night’s 4-1 win over Belleville.

““I thought we got off to a slow start tonight. They really came at us, they have good skill, good speed. They jumped on us early and we got out the first period and then, you know, we started to come back. In the second period, [we] started to take over the game a bit and from there we just traded punches a bit and [there were] nine goals scored in the game.” – Todd Nelson on tonight’s performance

“He’s a really mobile defender, and offensively he knows when to jump into holes and that’s what happened on his goal tonight, where he jumped up in the play and created the odd-man rush. His skating ability, he gives a good first pass, that’s what he does well and he keeps his game simple like that.” – Todd Nelson on Jon McDonald’s first goal and development

““I mean, Sauns made a great play and I was in the right spot and I got a little lucky [shooting] glove-side. So it was a cool experience, but happy it happened when it happened, and two [standings] points is big. Everybody was thrilled for me; I don’t really do too well with the praise, so I was kind of trying to fight it off, but it’s such a good group of guys, when everybody gets so excited for you, it’s hard not to cheese a little bit.” – Jon McDonald on his first AHL goal