With the state of the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins now, with half of their scoring on recall to Pittsburgh, a dogfight in Hershey was going to be expected. The Bears are underachieving right now, and they did not want to get outclassed by their rivals in Wilkes-Barre by going 0-fer in the season going into December.
They also accomplished this feat by yet another third period comeback, down 2-0 after the second intermission.
Jeff Deslauriers vs. David Leggio
Peter Merth was in for Dustin Stevenson. Dominik Uher needs “further evaluation” per Mike O’Brien on the pre game show from his upper body injury suffered Wednesday in Adirondack.
First Period: Pierre-Luc Letourneau Leblond and Joel Rechlicz fought in a dandy of a fight. Then, the Pens took a penalty and Stan Galiev scored to put the Bears ahead 1-0. Pens go 0-for-2 on the power play the rest of the way. The Bears really did a nice job of bottling up the Pens all period long.
Second Period: Pens fail to score on extended 5:00 major for charging on Garrett Mitchell on a hit from Brain Gibbons. Pens couldn’t do anything with it. Tempers flared as custom between these teams. Dave Leggio makes a nice save on Scott Harrington, Harry Zolnierczyk had about five chances all game to score but did not. Bears double the lead on a backhander just as a power play for them expires from Jeff Taffe.
Penguins really owned the period, but could not solve Leggio and gave up a goal to Taffe for a 2-0 deficit heading into the….
Third Period: Pierre Leblond scores his first goal for the Penguins on a firecracker of a shot from below the blue line to cut the Bears deficit in half. Hershey would then play full on prevent defense but Mike Carman would score in a scrum to tie the game late. Brian Gibbons and Harry Zolnierczyk were magic all night but just could not connect all night and missed one late. Deslauriers with a save on a Bear from the point. Penguins ice the puck three times in the final third seconds and it was onto…
Overtime: Mike Carman strips a Bear of a puck, feeds a streaking Kostopoulos but the captain misses. Then the Bears score with 6.6 left as David Kolomatis would receive a pass from the corner after Deslauriers directed a puck there. The Penguins goaltender was out of position as Kolomatis let loose and the Bears would take this one in overtime.
Three Stars: 3) Casey Wellman (two assists, +1) 2) Mike Carman (goal, +1) and 1) David Kolomatis (game winning OT goal, even)
Around the Division: Brad Thiessen loses in his 2013-14 AHL debut with the Norfolk Admirals 3-2 as the Providence Bruins sweep the weekend series with the Admirals. The Binghamton Senators lose 4-3 in a shootout to the St. John’s IceCaps and remain tied with Wilkes-Barre in points, but remains second in the division due to tiebreakers. The Syracuse Crunch bus broke down and arrived late for a game with the Adirondack Phantoms in Glens Falls but the Crunch still won 1-0 anyway.
Wheeling Update: The Nailers shutout the hapless Toledo Walleye 3-0 tonight in West Virginia. The Walleye have been shutout in three straight game. Anton Zlobin had a goal for the Nailers in the win.
SendToNews Highlights: Here they are. Or, alternatively, watch this…
Content wise, if anything breaks Sunday, I will have it here. If not, the Week 9 AHL Power Rankings will be here Monday afternoon at 4 p.m.
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Chirps from Center Ice 