A Sunday evening skate on Hersheypark pass night, a jersey auction with a large crowd, plus add in the rival Phantoms and you have a recipe for a great night of hockey at the Bears Den.
Coming off a thrilling come from behind win Saturday against WB/S, Hershey wasted no time finding a spark. After the game, Nelson was all smiles with the effort.
“I like the fact that how we’re playing in the offensive zone and I still think we can shoot more. We passed up a few shots and two-on-ones tonight, but all in all it was a pretty good offensive effort from our team.”
It took just over eight minutes from Ivan Miroshnichenko to continue his hot weekend. After a pair of tallies Saturday, Miro gave Hershey the early 1-0 lead with a blast from just above the left dot for the power play goal. As the Giant Center roared for Miro’s 16th of the season, Hendrix Lappier who had the helper had more in mind for this one.
Just four minutes later Lappy teamed up with Miro and Nicky Leivermann for a give and go with Leivermann threading a beautiful biscuit to Lappy for any easy goal and 2-0 lead.
” As soon as I gave the puck to Miro, I was like, ‘Oh no’, like, I gave him a bad pass, or I put him in the bad spot,” Lappy smiled in post game describing his goal. “Then I turn around, and I see he makes a really good pass to Leivo, who was in the right spot too. And, you know, I think Leivo kind of read that the goalie was maybe a little out of his crease so he was able to hit me. And I think it was a pretty good goal, pretty fun goal to score. You know, we work a lot on those three on twos and stuff in practices, so yeah just a nice play by Miro and Leivo and I was just I guess at the right spot at the right time. “
In the second, Dalton Smith scored his first goal (99th career professional point) wearing a Bears’ sweater on a fancy topshelf wrister to beat Phantoms goalie Keith Petruzzelli. On the goal, veteran Garrett Roe notched an assist for his 99th career point in career game number 200. For Smith, the first one is always special.
“Yeah, it’s special,” Smith said after the game. “This is a great organization, so many good players and amazing fans. So just to get the first one was really special and it was a heck of a play by [Bear] and I just tried to get the shot through and it went in – it was awesome. Definitely no – that’s a little bit of a rarity of my game, but I thought I’d try it and it worked out pretty good.”
Hershey was sharp in every facet of the game. Leading 3-0 after two periods, the score could have been slanted even more if not for the play of Petruzzelli who made at least five high quality saves to keep this game with-in striking distance for Lehigh Valley.
Not to be forgotten, Vinny Iorio who at one point lost his helmet on a check in the far corner, found not only his headwear but the back of the net as he closed out the scoring with a blast coming from a face-off win for his fourth goal of the year to make it 4-0 Bears.
The Bears closed it with a full 60 of intense skating, a positive sign to kick-off the final two months of regular season hockey.
“We got through February, didn’t play a lot of games, but now it starts to heat up for us,” Nelson said from the podium. ” So the thing is that I like where we’re at, you know, the last four, last four games, we learned a bit like Charlotte, the first game, we were pretty flat. Then we came and had a solid effort the next night and we had two solid efforts this weekend. So we’re gonna enjoy the day off and then we’ll get back to work and focus on Wednesday’s game.”
Shep Daddy’s House
Hunter Shepard notched his 74th career victory in style with a shutout. The victory ties him with Braden Holtby for 8th all-time on the Hershey Bears wins list. The shutout is Shepard’s 10th career donut which puts him in a tie for 10th all-time on the Chocolate and White’s list with Peter Budaj.
After the game Shepard had this to say about him moving up the record books.
“That’s a product of being on a good team, I think the last couple years, like you see at every level, you know, you can be a really good goalie and not on a great team. So it takes everybody. Obviously, you know, the goalie is the one thing that’s easy to see, because you’re by yourself out there.”
“As a team, we’ve done a lot of things that, you know, for how long Hershey has had a team, it’s pretty, you know, it’s not something you sit around and think about right now, but when we’re done playing, someday, it’ll be kind of like, you’ll look back and be like, that’s crazy. Hershey’s had a team for this long? We’ve done some of those things.”
The Chocolate Roar 