Walker and Pens Waddle by Bears 12.28.11

Although the logo on the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins’ uniforms is a penguin, the Baby Pens are apparently living a cat’s life as the visitors overcame a two-goal third period deficit and emerged with a 6-5 shootout win over the Hershey Bears at Giant Center on Wednesday night.

The win by the Penguins was their ninth straight triumph at Giant Center, a streak that dates back to last season.

After a scoreless first period, the Penguins tallied the first goal of the game when Eric Tangradi tickled the twine 1:21 into the second period.

Hershey’s Graham Mink (power play) and Cody Eakin countered Tangradi’s goal to give the Bears their first lead of the game, but a goal by Geoff Walker with just over a minute after Eakin’s marker tied it up at two entering the last minute of the second period.

In the eventful last minute, WBS’s Zach Sill struck with his club in shorthanded mode, but a power play goal by Hershey’s Tomas Kundratek at 19:38 sent the game into the third period tied at three.

Power play goals seventy-five seconds apart by Chris Bourque (4-on-3) and Ryan Potulny gave the Bears a 5-3 lead less than eight minutes into the third period, but the pesky Pens sent the game into overtime and eventually the shootout when Tangradi (at 11:02) and Nick Petersen (at 18:07) put pucks behind Bears’ netminder, Dany Sabourin.

Ironically, the shootout went nine rounds and ended with Walker beating Sabourin on the Pens ninth attempt.

Notes-Potulny has a point in each of the five games he has played this season against WBS.

The game drew a sellout crowd of 10,801 and improved Hershey’s average through 17 home dates to 9,250 which is nearly double the average AHL home attendance (5,023).

Bears Pound Pens 12.27.11

The Hershey Bears scored early and then often against the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins on Tuesday night at Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza and pounded the Pens 6-0.

In their first action after the Christmas break, the Bears blitzed out to a 1-0 lead only 2:35 into the game when defenseman Tomas Kundratek was left all alone in front of WBS netminder Brad Thiessen and converted a centering pass from Matt Ford into his 5th goal of the season.

Before the first stanza was over, Kundratek’s fellow defensemen Julien Brouillette and Patrick McNeill also found the back of the net to give the Bears a 3-0 after twenty minutes of play.

In the middle frame, the Pens outshot the Bears by a 3-to-1 ratio (9-3), but thanks to some stellar work from the goalposts and from Bears’ backstoppper Braden Holtby, the Bears carried a 3-0 lead into the third period.

Jacob Micflikier’s power play strike 6:26 into the third period was followed by a pair of capers by Cody Eakin and gave the Bears the final 6-0 margin of victory, increasing their lead to four points over the Penguins and the Norfolk Admirals for first place in the AHL’s East Division.

Notes-The Bears have outscored their opponents in the first period this season, 47-23.

The Bears have not allowed a first period goal to the Pens in the last three games between the clubs.

Tonight’s game marked the seventh time this season that the Bears have received goals from at least five different players in a game.

Hershey’s six-goal margin of victory was their second of the season (7-1 win over Portland at Giant Center on December 3rd).

Bears Singe Sound Tigers 12.17.11

No Graham Mink? No problem.

The Hershey Bears, skating without Mink, one of the league’s premier power play performers, still managed to pot three power play goals and cruised to a 5-0 shutout win over the Bridgeport Sound Tigers on Saturday night at Giant Center.

Christian Hanson started the scoring for the Bears by netting his first goal in 20 games to stake the home club to a 1-0 lead at 8:56 of the first period with his fourth goal of the season, a power play marker.

“I was getting my chances, but the puck just wasn’t going in,” said Hanson of his struggles. “It was nice to contribute and hopefully I will continue to be able to do that going forward.”

Hanson’s goal came after he received a crisp pass from Chris Bourque, Hershey’s power play quarterback, who was at his customary point position. Hanson knocked the puck down with his stick and then sailed a shot by Bridgeport netminder Kevin Poulin.

“The one-timer wasn’t possible because it was coming across body from (Chris) Bourque, but he made a nice play to find me in the seam. I knew Kane was in front, and I just wanted to get it on net as quickly as possible, and Kaner made a nice play on the screen and the goalie didn’t see it,” said Hanson.

Later in the period, Hershey captain Boyd Kane, who sat out of his club’s previous two games with a minor injury, turned diligent defensive work into offensive output when he netted his 9th goal of the season at 10:54 and beat Poulin on a breakaway after blocking Ty Wishart’s shot at the Bridgeport blueline.

In the middle frame, Bridgeport came out buzzing and outshot the Bears 5-0 in the early going, and 16-7 overall, but they could not beat Hershey netminder Dany Sabourin. Sabourin, who remained stellar all night long, made his best save of the night in the seventh minute of play when he snuffed out Casey Cizikas’ backhand bid on a semi-breakaway.

Matt Ford tacked on a late period goal to give the Bears a 3-0 lead after forty minutes of action. The sequence started with a faceoff in the Bridgeport zone between Ryan Potulny and Bridgeport’s Trevor Frischmon.

Frischmon controlled the draw in the faceoff circle and then whirled around and erroneously fired a perfect pass behind his own net right onto the stick of a surprised Bear, Jacob Micflikier. Micflikier drifted slightly to his left and then threaded a pass to Matt Ford in the crease area; Ford subsequently proceeded to push the puck into the net behind Poulin who seemed incensed that Ford had completed his mission while surrounded by three Bridgeport defenders.

Ryan Potulny then put the Sound Tigers on ice in the third period with a pair of power play strikes in the first half of the final frame which gave the Bears three power play goal on six opportunities on the evening. Counting tonight’s impressive showing with the extra man (3-for-6), the Bears are a combined and 8-for-25 (32.0%) in their six games and post a 4-1-1-0 record without Mink’s services.

“It’s pretty much the same personnel,” said Bourque when explaining the reason for the success. “Mink’s a big body in front, and he’s so good at tipping pucks and making screens; but we’ve got other guys who fill in that spot, and tonight they were able to get some good lanes for shots from the point. I thought Jake (Micflikier) did a great job of getting in the goalie’s eyes and taking away his vision on the shots from the point.”

Notes- Sabourin, who stopped the last 20 shots he faced against the Portland Pirates on December 3rd at Giant Center, has now stopped 52 straight shots at the venue.

Hershey scratches were Graham Mink (veteran), Kyle Greentree (injured), and Maxime Lacroix, Zach Miskovic, and Patrick Wellar (all healthy).

The Bears now lead the league in wins (12) when leading after two periods.
Bourque and Keith Aucoin, who garnered an assist on Potulny’s first goal, have now each tallied at least a point in 23 of the Bears’ 28 outings.

Hershey’s seven game-winning goals this season at Giant Center have been scored by seven different players (Hanson, Bourque, Kane, Micflikier, Mink, Dimitri Orlov, and Potulny).

The Bears have outscored their opponents 24-11 in first period at GC on the season.
Kane’s goal was the Bears 100th of the season.

The Bears three largest margins of victory have occurred with Sabourin in net: tonight’s game, a six-goal verdict over Portland on December 3rd, and a seven-goal verdict over Syracuse on October 23rd.

Pens Put Bears' Win Streak on Ice 12.10.11

There’s a reason that hockey games are played on the ice and not on paper, and Saturday night’s matchup between Keystone state rivals Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins and Hershey Bears at Giant Center was a good testament to that.

The baby Pens entered the game without the services of Jason Williams who had been recalled to Pittsburgh prior to the game, as well as a couple of other key cogs to their engine who were also recently recalled. Additionally, backup goaltender Scott Munroe was tending the twine. While the Bears entered the game on a four-game winning streak and have recently been playing some of their best hockey of the season, it was the baby Pens who prevailed with a 4-2 win.

After a scoreless first period in which the Bears decisively outplayed and also outshot the visitors 15-10, the teams entered the first intermission with neither team able to put a goal on their side of the scoreboard.

In the middle stanza, it was the Bears who lit the lamp for the first goal of the game with their solid second line combination of Matt Ford, Andrew Carroll, and Ryan Potulny all factoring into the goal, with Potulny doing the goal-scoring honors and garnering his 7th goal of the season in the process at 7:38. The sequence started seconds before the Potulny put-away when Carroll craftily redirected a centering pass from Ford in the direction of Munroe and the puck then slithered toward the goal line before defenseman Carl Sneep steered it away. However, the Bears kept the puck in the WBS zone with Ford eventually gathering it in along the back boards. Ford then proceeded to backhand a pass to Potulny who buzzed a shot by Munroe, with Carroll providing a strong screen in front of Munroe to help in the effort.

Hershey’s lead lasted just over four minutes before the pesky Pens tied the game when Ben Street found an open avenue on the blocker side of Bears’ backstoppper Braden Holtby and squeezed a shot by him at 11:48, just 14 seconds after the Bears had successfully killed off WBS’ third power play of the game.

Within the first four minutes of the final frame, the Pens scored on two of their first three shots to essentially put the game out of reach for the Bears. First, it was Eric Tangradi who tickled the twine on a soft backhander from the bottom of the faceoff circle only 46 seconds in, and then it was a Bryan Lerg one-time laser from between the faceoff circles that did the damage.

The Bears pulled Holtby in the final three minutes of regulation, but it was all for naught when the Pens were awarded an empty net goal at 17:55 when referee David Banfield correctly ruled that Hershey’s Graham Mink had intentionally knocked the net off its moorings.

The Bears added a goal by defenseman Tomas Kundratek in the final minute of a play, which extended his scoring streak to five straight games and also gave rough-and-tumble forward Joel Rechlicz his first point of the season, but it was too little too late for the Bears who fell to 13-7-3-2 in suffering the setback.

Notes- Hershey’s scoreless first period was only the second such occurrence on Giant Center ice this season; the other occasion was also a loss against the baby Pens on October 22nd.

The Bears outscored their opponents 19-7 overall during their four-game winning streak, including 10-0 during the second periods of those four outings.

The game marked the first time this season that Potulny only scored one goal in a game. In three previous games, he scored two in each game.

The Bears scratched injured forwards D.J. King and Kyle Greentree, in addition to healthy scratches Garrett Mitchell, Danny Richmond (veteran), and Zach Miskovic (for the sixth straight game).

Washington Capitals’ coach Dale Hunter and his assistant coach Jim Johnson, the former head coach of the Norfolk Admirals, watched the game from the Bears’ suite along with Bears’ President and GM, Doug Yingst.

Bears Slip by Sound Tigers 12.4.11

The Hershey Bears finished off a perfect three-game weekend on Sunday evening in Bridgeport, Connecticut at Webster Bank Arena by edging the Bridgeport Sound Tigers 3-2.

The win by the Bears, their 12th of the season, marked their first three-game winning streak since the first three games of the campaign, and move them into a three-way tie with the Norfolk Admirals and the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins for first place in the AHL’s East Division, but Hershey has one game in hand of each of those rivals.

Bridgeport’s Trevor Frischmon scored the only goal of the first period, but early in the second period, Hershey’s Keith Aucoin took charge and wrested the control of the game to the Bears’ side.

Aucoin, who led the league in points (34) and assists (30) entering the game, netted his 5th goal of the season at 2:50 of the middle frame and then added a shorthanded strike less than three minutes later to give his club a 2-1 lead.

Aucoin’s first goal broke his streak of sixteen consecutive assists, and his shorthanded salvo was the Bears’ first since October 7th when they notched two “shorties” against the Binghamton Senators in their season opener.

Before the buzzer sounded to end the second period, the Bears had increased their lead to 3-1 when Jacob Micflikier beat Bridgeport backstoppper Kevin Poulin from a tough angle. Micflikier’s goal, his 9th of the season, broke a seven-game goal scoring drought for the native of Winnipeg, Manitoba who scored 29 goals for the Charlotte Checkers last season.

In the third period, the Bears survived a late 5-on-3 Bridgeport power play and eventually yielded another goal by Frischmon, but hung on to claim their 7th road triumph of the year.

Bears Pounce on Pirates 12.3.11

The Portland Pirates, not landlubbers and obviously not teddy bear lovers after tonight’s game, fell 7-1 in a ferocious Hershey Bears attack Saturday night at Giant Center thanks in large part to the 10,000-plus teddy bears that were flung onto the ice on the Bears’ annual Teddy Bear Toss night.

After a tentative start by the Bears which included yielding the first goal of the game for only the fifth time this season and the first time in 10 games, a goal by Portland’s Ryan Duncan, the Bears evened the contest up when former Pirate Graham Mink gave the home fans the opportunity to unleash the bears. Mink buzzed a shot by the blocker of Portland goaltender Jason Pogge at 16:28 with the Bears on a power play. Mink’s marker was his 9th of the season, eight of which have been struck at Giant Center.

After the avalanche of bears that were thrown onto the ice after Mink’s goal, the officials elected to send the clubs to their respective dressing rooms while the stuffed animals were collected, and the ice was then resurfaced before the teams resumed play with 3:32 left on the scoreboard clock for the first period.

After the teams returned to the ice, neither team was able to score as the 3:32 ticked away, but 6:28 into the second stanza, thanks in large part to veteran Ryan Potulny, the Bears grabbed back the lead that they had earlier relinquished. Potulny skillfully utilized his veteran guile to garner his 3rd goal of the season.

Potulny’s linemate Jacob Micflikier started the sequence by carrying the puck just inside the Portland blueline where he slammed on the brakes. After coming to the sudden stop, Micflikier saucered a centering pass to Potulny who was cruising down the slot, where he looked to have a play on the puck, but wisely elected to let it go to winger Matt Ford who put a perfect pass on the tape of Potulny who had outraced a Portland defender to the crease area.

Following Potulny’s plundering of Pogge, the Bears added second period goals from Matt Pope, Julien Brouilliette and Mink, and third period strikes from Matthew Ford and another from Potulny to cruise to their 11th win of the season.

Notes- Hershey scratches were defensemen Danny Richmond (veteran) and Zach Miskovic (healthy), and forwards D.J. King (injury), Garrett Mitchell (healthy), and Kyle Greentree (injury).

Former Capital and current goaltending coach of the organization Olaf Kolzig attended the game.

Mink has scored the Bears’ first goal of the game six times this season at Giant Center.

Bears Best Bruins 11.23.11

On Wednesday night at Giant Center, the Providence Bruins finally ventured out of New England for the first time this season, and the Hershey Bears, who also beat the Bruins on Thanksgiving Eve in 2009 were thankful for that as they defeated the Bruins 4-3 to break a four-game winless streak.

The Bears, who had scored the first goal in 12 of their 16 games prior to tonight, allowed just 18 seconds to elapse off the Giant Center scoreboard before they lit it up with a goal by Chris Bourque. Bourque combined with fellow New Englander Keith Aucoin and one-timed a shot by Providence netminder Anton Khudobin, who entered the game leading the AHL in saves, to give the Bears a 1-0 lead. Bourque, on his off wing, one-timed a pass from Aucoin, but did not get all of the puck which created a changeup-like effect on his shot, a factor that played heavily in his strike.

“It came a little funny off my blade,” said Bourque. “I didn’t expect it to go in, but those are the bounces you need to get to win games and it was a pretty good start for us. It was nice to be able to build off that.”

Later in the stanza, Hershey goaltender Dany Sabourin allowed a soft shot from David Warsofsky that emanated from halfway up the right wing wall.

“It was one you have to stop. I was drifting back and worried about the guy driving the net, but I really had to play the shot,” Sabourin said.

Rookie defenseman Brett Flemming gave the Bears the 2-1 lead that they carried into the first intermission when his shot from the blueline eluded Khudobin.

Ryan Potulny, playing in his first game since October 8th and his first ever game at Giant Center wearing the Chocolate and White, started the sequence by winning a faceoff in the Providence zone. After the faceoff win, winger Jacob Micflikier gained control of the puck and sent it back to Flemming at the point. Flemming then drifted along the blueline to the boards where he launched a wrist shot that evaded Khudobin thanks to the other winger on the line, Graham Mink, who was coasting through the slot as the shot trickled through.

In the second period, the P-Bruins had a magnificent chance to tie the game right off the opening faceoff, but Sabourin spoiled that bid by snaring Kyle MacKinnon’s shot with his glove hand. The Bears held the Bruins to only five shots in the second period, but Sabourin recovered from his first period misplay and stopped another quality bid by MacKinnon later in the period.

“I bounced back and felt good at the beginning of the game, too, then that goal came,” said Sabourin. “You have to just live with it and move on. The guys played a great game in front of me.”

The Bears enjoyed an 8-3 shot advantage throughout the first 16:43 of the second stanza, but despite that advantage they were unable to lengthen their lead. Then Providence defenseman Ryan Button was sent to the “sin bin” for slashing, giving the home team their first full power play of the night. On the advantage, the Bears peppered Khudobin with four shots before defenseman Patrick McNeill, who kept the puck alive in the Providence zone seconds earlier with a nice keep-in, potted his first goal of the season at 17:35.

“It was kind of a lucky rebound,” said McNeill, who scored on his 25th shot of the season. “Aucoin threw it across to Graham Mink who got a good whack at it. The puck came out of the high slot and I just happened to cruise in from the blue line at that time. I got a couple whacks at it and I even hit it with my skate and I finally willed it in.”

Bears’ captain Boyd Kane gave his club some breathing room 34 seconds into the third period, but the Bruins answered with a goal by Josh Hennessy to make it a one-goal game again at 4-3. However, the Bears never relinquished that lead and came away with the win, which was their first since a November 9th shutout win over Binghamton at Giant Center.

“It’s huge to get out of that rut we were in there,” said Bourque. We were getting one point, but had not been able to get those two points to have a regulation win. Now we want to get some points and catch up in the standings.”

Notes:

The Bears have scored at least one PPG in all nine of their home contests.

Zach Hamill, the P-Bruins’ second leading scorer this season (6g, 7a), sat out the game to serve a one-game suspension.

Hershey scratched injured players Sean Collins and Kyle Greentree, while the healthy scratches were Danny Richmond, D.J. King, Matt Pope, and Garrett Mitchell.

Devils Down Bears in Shootout 11.19.11

The Hershey Bears continued their recent struggles on Saturday night at Giant Center by dropping their second straight shootout loss in as many games, a 6-5 decision to the Albany Devils. With the loss, the Bears stretched their winless streak to four games (0-1-1-2) and now find themselves five points behind the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins for the division lead in the AHL’s East Division.

Things started well for the Bears when Graham Mink garnered the first goal of the contest at 4:11 by masterfully deflecting Patrick McNeill’s point shot by Albany’s keeper, Keith Kinkaid. Mink’s marker was his fourth of the season and incidentally, all four of his tallies have occurred at Giant Center, on the power play, and in the first period.

The home team stretched their lead to 2-0 when defenseman Dmitry Orlov lit the lamp at 11:08 of the opening frame. Orlov, after gathering in the puck behind the Hershey net, went nearly the full length of the ice and evaded three defenders in the process before launching a low laser from just inside the Albany blue line that buzzed by the glove hand of Kinkaid.

The dastardly Devils clawed their way back into the contest later in the session and registered a goal from Nathan Perkovich off a pretty feed from former Bear, Chad Wiseman. They then received a late- period gift from Hershey netminder Braden Holtby in the final ten seconds to tie the game at one after 20 minutes of play.

Midway through the middle frame, Eric Gelinas’ power play strike gave the Devils their first lead of the game, but Chris Bourque’s (4-on-3) power play response sent the game into the final frame knotted at three.

Albany took their second one-goal lead of the game early in the third period, but again, it was another power play goal by Bourque at 7:51 that evened things up. Later in the stanza, Albany’s Tim Sestito gave the visitors another one-goal lead, but once again the Bears responded. This time however, it was Boyd Kane who canned the goal with assistance from Bourque and Orlov to send the game into overtime, and eventually into the shootout.

In the shootout, the Bears took a 1-0 lead after the first round when Jacob Micflikier beat Kinkaid and Holtby halted Wiseman’s bid. However, Kinkaid stopped Hershey’s next three shooters and Holtby allowed three successive Albany shooters to tickle the twine to give the Devils the shootout win.

Notes- Keith Aucoin, who collected an assist on Bourque’s first power play goal, shares the AHL lead in power play assists and currently sits one helper behind Peoria’s T.J. Hensick for the overall league-lead in assists.

Graham Mink has now managed at least one point in six of the seven home games in which he has played this season (4g, 6a).

Mark Howe, the former Philadelphia Flyers great who was recently inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, attended the game as a scout for the Detroit Red Wings.

Defenseman Danny Richmond and forward Matt Pope were Hershey’s healthy scratches, while defenseman Sean Collins and Tomas Kundratek and forwards Ryan Potulny, Matt Ford, and Kyle Greentree were the injury scratches.

The Bears have scored the first goal of the game in 12 of the 15 games that they have scored a goal.

Bears Crush Crunch

In their illustrious seventy-four year history in the American Hockey League, the Hershey Bears have won over 2,500 regular season games. However, it’s a pretty safe bet that not many of those triumphs were attained largely as a result of a seemingly insignificant faceoff in the neutral zone, particularly when the draw occurred in that zone at the faceoff dot that was furthest away from the net that the Bears were attacking.

Sunday night at Giant Center brought those exact circumstances as the Bears rode the momentum from that rare goal to a 7-0 drubbing of the Syracuse Crunch and handed the visitors their first regulation setback of the season, which gave the Bears their first home victory of the young season.

Prior to the game-changing strike, even while building a 1-0 first period lead on Dmitry Orlov’s first goal of the season, the Bears appeared a bit tentative on the attack, which is not surprising considering how they played in a 3-1 loss to the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins the previous night in Hershey.

“I thought we came out a little, not hesitant I would say, but a little tentative knowing that the way we played last night wasn’t the way we wanted to play,” said Jacob Micflikier. “We knew we had to step up and make a big statement tonight, but you never expect to blow out a team like that in this league. When you look at the final score, it’s not really indicative of the way the game was.”

But late in the period with thirteen seconds remaining in the frame, Bears’ fans had little idea that the next ten seconds would be eventful. With an impending neutral zone draw, Hershey coach Mark French elected to make a late line change and took of the line centered by Keith Aucoin, in favor of the line centered by Cody Eakin.

Eakin and AHL veteran Nathan Smith dueled on the faceoff, and the immediate result was a stalemate with the puck lying in the faceoff dot. At that point, Smith swept the puck back into his own zone and seemingly made the safe play, but the puck ended up along the wall in his own zone on the stick of defenseman Mat Clark. Clark, a 6’3” 200-plus pound defenseman, was pressured by the 5’8” 180-pound Micflikier, with the ultimate result being Micflikier’s third goal of the season with 3.1 seconds remaining in the stanza.

“We were going to try and create a play of the faceoff. Obviously it wasn’t the one that unfolded, but one where I was going to get the puck and go in on a rush,” explained Micflikier. “Their D got the puck but didn’t have real good control, so I just went in hard on the forecheck trying to separate him and the puck. He got rid of it quick and (Boyd) Kane made a great play to throw it on the net and right to a place where I could post up."

The Bears then reeled off four power play goals in the remaining forty minutes of action, with Micflikier collecting a helper on one of those tallies. With their power play success on the evening (4-for-6), the Bears find themselves in the upper echelon of the league in that category.

“You hope to be pretty successful out there. We’ve had a bunch of games where we’ve gone 4-for 5 or something like that, which causes the numbers to get a little skewed, but we’ve also had nights where we didn’t produce. It’s early in the year and things tend to even out, but it’s good for everybody on that unit to get some confidence by having the success we’ve had,” Micflikier said.

Notes- In last year’s six-game series between the Crunch and the Bears, the visiting team won all six contests.

The Crunch entered the game with an unblemished record in regulation (3-0-1-1).

Before the game, the Bears reassigned goaltender Philipp Grubauer to the South Carolina Stingrays of the ECHL. Grubauer, a nineteen-year-old rookie from Germany, has yet to see action in the crease for the Bears this season.

The Bears scratched defenseman Danny Richmond and Brett Flemming and forwards Joel Rechlicz, Graham Mink, Ryan Potulny and Kyle Greentree.

Dany Sabourin collected the shut-out by stopping all 36 Syracuse salvos. This was Sabourin’s third shutout as a Bear, his first at Giant Center and incidentally, his second against Syracuse.

Pens Prey on Bears

When one considers the proximity between their respective cities, it’s not much of a surprise that the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins have made Giant Center their unofficial home away from home. On Saturday night at the aforementioned venue, the visitors continued their recent mastery over the Hershey Bears and skated away with a convincing 3-1 win.

The Penguins, who with this victory have now won six straight outings against their Keystone State neighbors to the north, improved to 3-2-1-1 on the season while the Bears, who are a perfect 4-0 on the road, slipped to 0-1-1-0 at home with the setback.

Brian Gibbons, who scored the baby Pens’ first goal in their 3-2 loss to the Bears earlier in the season at Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza in the only prior meeting between the clubs on this young season, replicated that feat at 3:36 of the first period by deflecting a Jason Williams point shot by Hershey goaltender Braden Holtby while the visitors were on a power play.

The first period foretold the futility that the Bears would endure in this encounter as they failed to establish a prolonged presence in the Pens’ zone despite their 17 shots on net; Hershey also short-circuited one of their two extra-man advantages by taking a penalty of their own.

Holtby, who had a shaky outing in the Bears’ home opener a week ago, kept his club in the game in the first period by stopping 13 shots, including close-range bids from Gibbons (right pad save) and Colin McDonald (left pad, shorthanded) in the latter stages of the stanza.

Early in the second period, the Pens were pestering Holtby again, but he was up to the challenge and made a couple of early saves with some help from defenseman Patrick McNeill, who swept a puck out of danger when Holtby left a rebound in his crease.

However, the pesky Pens eventually doubled their lead when Penguins’ defenseman Simon Despres made it 2-0 at 7:19. Despres’ dart, which occurred with the teams skating at four aside, came only 29 seconds after Graham Mink derailed a Bears’ power play by committing a tripping infraction.

Bryan Lerg lengthened the Pens lead to 3-0 at 10:45 of the second period when he finished off a picturesque give-and-go sequence with Paul Thompson.

Hershey captain Boyd Kane thwarted Brad Thiessen’s bid for a shutout late in the third period by canning his second goal in as many days to make it 3-1 with a power play marker, but Kane’s caper would be all of the offense his club could muster on the evening.

Notes- Thiessen pitched a 26-save shutout on Friday night in Springfield against the Falcons.

With Dany Sabourin still on recall to the Washington Capitals, Holtby made his third straight start for the Bears.

The Bears scratched defensemen Danny Richmond and Brett Fleming and forwards Maxime Lacroix, Joel Rechlicz, Ryan Potulny and Kyle Greentree.

The Bears have now given up the first goal of the game in their last two games after scoring the game-opening goals in the prior four contests.

Hershey’s first period blanking was the first time season they failed to score in the first period and also marked the first time this season that they faced a deficit after 20 minutes of play.

Chris Bourque, who leads the league in shots on goal, registered only a single shot on net in this game, but did extend his point streak to six games with an assist on Kane’s goal, while his linemate Keith Aucoin saw his five-game point streak come to an end.

During his playing career, including the 200 games spent with the Hershey Bears, Louis Robitaille was a master at getting under the skin of his opponents and goaded numerous victims into taking penalties that they ordinarily would not take. Robitaille’s unique riling talents were not limited to the ice-- he often drew the ire of his own coaches for his tactics, including current Washington Capitals head coach, Bruce Boudreau, when he and Robitaille were both with the Bears.

Boudreau, in fact, was once quoted as saying, “Louis is a guy that you hate when he’s on the other team, but hate him a little less when he’s on yours.” So it probably came as a bit of a surprise to Boudreau and a few of Robitaille’s other bench bosses when over the summer, after playing in an AHL career low 50 games with the Albany Devils last season, he decided to retire as a player and become a head coach.

"It was always in mind that I wanted to be a coach when my career was over, and last year was a difficult one for me with me being an AHL veteran,” said Robitaille, who coaches the Valleyfield Braves, a Quebec Junior AAA Hockey League club.

“With my son now being three and a half, I thought it was the right time for me to start a new career. I’m still at a relatively young age (29), and I still have the passion for the game and I miss playing, but after going through a couple of interviews over the summer and talking it over with my family, I thought it was the right thing to do."

Currently, very early in his rookie season guiding the Braves, Robitaille’s charges are off to a wonderful 6-1-1 start. It should be of no surprise to fans of the Bears and Capitals who Robitaille revealed which of his former coaches influenced him the most.

“I would say the two coaches that I try to model are Bruce (Boudreau) and John MacLean. I was involved with Bruce for three years in Hershey and with me staying in Hershey over the summer; I could tell how dedicated he always was to his job. Bruce was also a player’s coach and he never looked at is as how many hours it was he was putting into doing his job, but he put in whatever time that it took to make himself a well prepared coach.”

“I’m still learning, but that’s the way I’m doing this job. I’m putting a lot of hours into it to make it work, and if you look at our team right now, we basically play the same system that Washington does.”

Throughout his Hershey career, Robitaille was often criticized for his reluctance to drop the gloves by his frustrated foes, but if stats be the judge, they say that Robitaille accepted many more invitations than he denied.

“I had so many fights during my time there, whether I was getting jumped or going after a guy,” said Robitaille, who was officially credited with 938 PIM’s and 83 fights in his three years in Hershey. “To judge if it’s a really good fight you not only have to think whether you did well, but you also have to look at it to see if it was at the right time.”

He continued, “I think one of my best fights was against Brennan Evens (Binghamton) in my first year in Hershey. That was a toe-to-toe battle at Giant Center. I also had a really good one against Eric Meloche in the 2006 playoffs (game four) against Norfolk that I thought changed the momentum of that game in our favor.”

Perhaps the biggest occupational hazard of any hockey players, particularly those who play with the reckless abandon that Robitaille played with is the risk of injury--particularly head injuries. Over the course of this past summer, the hockey world suffered a number of deaths to players that were at least in some way attributed to concussions and other symptoms related to head blows. That is a subject with which Robitaille is very familiar, and he has a seemingly plausible explanation of the spike in head injuries over the last few years in hockey.

“I’d say that I had about three or four of them that the doctors told me that I had to stop playing for a bit, and I probably had a couple more than that but I never said anything and I kept playing,” confessed Robitaille. “It’s like a little headache here and there, but you keep going because every hockey player suffers mild concussions here and there. You have the mentality that you don’t want to sit a game.”

“Back in the days when I first came into the AHL, you were still allowed to clutch and grab a little bit. But after they changed the rules, my style of game was when I had the puck between the blue and the red lines that I was going to softly chip the puck in and go in on the defenseman on the forecheck because they were not allowed to hold you up. The guys are in such good shape now and going 100 miles an hour and the defenseman in particular have no time to react and because of that, their heads are very exposed. So I think the new rules have a lot to do with the many head injuries.”

Last season at Giant Center, in what turned out to be his next to last appearance as a player in that venue, Robitaille was at the center of controversy when he collided with Hershey netminder Dany Sabourin behind the net. The hit earned him a game misconduct and a major penalty for charging Sabourin, and it essentially ended Sabourin’s season. Even now, however, as he did on that night, Robitaille maintains his innocence in the incident.

“It was definitely not intentional,” he said. “It was my first shift of the game and I was coming straight off the bench on the forecheck. My emotion was running high and I was excited to play and my intent was to go hard on the d-man. (Brian) Fahey had the puck behind the net and I know Dany stopped the puck and I thought he was getting out of there quicker. I think he stayed there to slow me down on the forecheck and I never stopped.”

“It was just a bad accident,” explained Robitaille. “If I had wanted to intentionally hit him, I would have hit him right in the number. If you look at the video, I caught his right leg and it was because I was trying to move out of the way because I realized I was kind of close. It’s one of those moments where you go out on the forecheck and you don’t realize what’s going on.”

Robitaille rates the 2005-06 Calder Cup winning season as the best of his career. In that campaign, he received his first and only NHL call-up, scored a career high of seven goals, and along with Joey Tenute and the combination of Eric Fehr and Jakub Klepis, played on a ferocious fourth line that would have been a first line combination in many clubs. In fact, Robitaille collected the sole assist on Tenute’s goal two minutes into the Cup-clinching game in Milwaukee, a game in which the Bears never looked back after that great start and cruised to a 5-1 victory.

There is no doubt that fans throughout the AHL all have lasting memories, whether they are positive or negative, of Robitaille who always seemed to be in the spotlight. But how does he want to be remembered by the fans?

“Oh, they’re gonna remember me as one of the premier pests in the AHL,” Robitaille chuckled. But really I want to be remembered as a guy who never backed down from anybody and as a guy who was always there for my teammates. I did take some bad penalties sometimes, but I was always a guy that had our team in mind first and I always worked hard for them. If it was something that would give a spark to my team, I would do it. Lastly, I was someone who always worked hard when I was on the ice. I was not the most talented guy on the ice, but to play eight years in the AHL and to play in the NHL and win the Calder Cup was to live my dream.”

At the conclusion of my conversation with the former number 24, Robitaille made a specific request that I include this message to the Hershey fans:

“Make sure you tell them that I’ll be at some games at Giant Center this year, and that I want to say thank you to all of the fans for their great support. They were always extremely nice to me and my family.”

Ads Sink Bears in OT 10.15.11

For Jacob Micflikier and the rest of his Hershey Bears teammates, it was a game of give and take in their home opener on Saturday night at Giant Center as the Bears gave up a two-goal second period lead, then rebounded to tie the game on a Micflikier power play goal late in regulation, only to lose in overtime to the Norfolk Admirals, 6-5.

Things started out well for the Bears as Graham Mink struck on the power play at 6:42 to give his team a 1-0 goal lead over the Ads and their goaltender Jaroslav Janus who made the start for the visitors after making a relief appearance on Friday night in Norfolk.

Then the defenseman took over the scoring with Norfolk’s Radko Gudas racking up a pair of goals within a six-minute span against Hershey goaltender Braden Holtby before Sean Collins capped off the period for the Bears, blasting a buzzer beating shot by Janus at 19:46.

The Bears regained the lead again on the power play at 6:01 of the second when a determined Keith Aucoin authored a beautiful pass to Chris Bourque, who found the back of the net for his fourth tally of the season. Aucoin’s helper was his 500th in the AHL.

“They were complaining all night about me in the draws, and then their guy was complaining to the refs, and I was standing there for about 20 seconds and I had enough,” said Aucoin. “So I went for a brief skate because I started to cramp up a little bit. I really wanted to win the draw after all of that and Mink helped me out and got it to Wellar, who gave it to me and I passed it as quick as I could to Bourque.”

The Bears doubled their lead midway through the period, but the Admirals then ran off three straight goals to take a 5-4 lead 8:59 in the final frame of regulation. But the “Battlin’ Bears” bounced back to tie the game on a power play goal by Micflikier at 13:15.

“We didn’t get as many good looks tonight as we wanted, especially compared to last night. Coiner made a good play to the net and Mink did what he is so good at, creating some space in front, and I was able to bang in the rebound in the far side,” Micflikier said.

However, Micflikier’s miscue in overtime, which the Admirals converted into the game-winning goal, doomed the Bears and sent the Admirals out of Giant Center with a fiercely-contested triumph.

“I got it by the first guy with control, and then I tried to slow it down a little bit to our d-man, but I misplayed it right into a turnover to their guy and their second guy came in for support and he cashed it in,” explained a somber Micflikier.

Notes- The Bears are 5-2-0-3 in their 10 season opening games at Giant Center, including a 1-1-0-1 record against Norfolk.

The Bears scratched defensemen Dmirty Orlov (illness), Brett Flemming (injury), Ryan Potulny (injury) and Francois Bouchard (healthy), and defenseman Zach Miskovic made his season debut.

Mink was returned to Giant Center for the first time since June 9, 2009. In that encounter, he scored the Bears’ first goal in a 3-2 loss to the Manitoba Moose in the Calder Cup Finals.

The eleven combined goals established a new Giant Center record for goals scored in a Bears’ home opener, erasing the previous high of eight set in Hershey’s 7-1 victory over the Syracuse Crunch in the 2008-2009 season.

The Bears have scored the first goal in each of their four games.

Steve Yzerman, Vice President and General Manager of the Tampa Bay Lightning which is Norfolk’s parent team, attended the game.

Bears Navigate by Norfolk

It may not have been a perfect effort from head coach Mark French’s crew, but it was an effective one as the Hershey Bears outdueled to Norfolk Admirals in Norfolk on Friday night, 7-5, improving their record to a perfect 3-0 on the campaign.

The Bears, who had not allowed more than twelve shots in a period entering the game, permitted 22 in the first period, but still entered the first intermission in good shape considering the lopsided shot totals, deadlocked at two, on the strength of a Chris Bourque power play goal and an even-strength strike from rookie defenseman Brett Fleming (first as a pro).

At the end of the first period, the Admirals took a penalty in the Bears’ zone and put the visitors on a power play to start the second stanza and although they technically failed on the endeavor, they ultimately succeeded on scoring the go-ahead goal, with Cody Eakin authoring the marker with a one-time laser that was launched from the top of the faceoff circle at 2:02.

Then Bourque and Mark Barberio traded goals eighty-five seconds apart before Jacob Micflikier put the exclamation point on a three-goal middle stanza for the Bears by netting a power play goal for his first tally wearing the Chocolate and White.

Eakin added another goal at 2:07 of the final frame, a long-range wrister that eluded Dustin Tokarski and spelled the end of his night in net for Norfolk. Tokarski was replaced by Jaroslav Janus.

Former WBS Penguins’ forward Michel Ouellet gave the Ads a shot of adrenaline shortly after the goaltending change, beating Hershey netminder Dany Sabourin at 2:25. However, Keith Aucoin curtailed any momentum the home team gathered from the Ouellet goal by netting his second goal in as many games at 6:06.

Norfolk added another late goal from Richard Panik at 16:26, but the Bears did not panic, and Sabourin and his mates held on for the win without allowing another tally.

Notes: In their last visit to Norfolk last season, the Bears stormed back from a 4-1 first period deficit with a four-goal second period to capsize the Admirals, 5-4.

Norfolk’s 22-shot first period total was just shy of the Bears average for shots against in a game entering the contest (27).

Patrick McNeill, who made his AHL debut for the Bears at Scope Arena on November 7, 2007, when he collected an assist on a goal by Joe Motzko, collected three assists tonight.

The Bears were 6-1-0-1 in eight outings against Norfolk last season.

Graham Mink, who left the Bears after their 2009 Calder Cup season, assisted on Micflikier’s goal to post his first point as a Bear since a March 28, 2009 game against the Bridgeport Sound Tigers at Giant Center.

Tonight’s game was Kyle Greentree’s 300th AHL game.

Bourque had three multi-goal games in his last season with the Bears in 2009-10, including a pair against the Admirals.

The Bears and Admirals continue their home-and-home weekend series tomorrow night at Giant Center.

Bears Bounce by Pens

Longtime fans of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins already know what Hershey Bears’ goaltender Dany Sabourin is capable of, having witnessed his 30-win season in 2005-06when his outstanding work tending the twine for the baby Pens earned him the Baz Bastien award as the best goaltender in the AHL. On Saturday night, they were eyewitness to some more of his solid work as he backstopped the Bears to a 3-2 road win over the Penguins.

Sabourin got off to a rough start last season in his first season as a Bear, but eventually regained his form and finished with a solid 14-9 record. However, he struggled in two losing outings against his former club, including an October 30th outing at Giant Center where he only lasted 9:51 when he yielded way to backup goalie Todd Ford after allowing three goals on only seven shots.

“Those types of things are always there a little bit, but I came into this year thinking it doesn’t matter which team we’re playing. I knew they beat me last year, but that’s in the past. I’m just focused on looking forward, and I was pretty happy with my performance tonight. It was a team win where everybody played well and showed up,” said Sabourin, who finished with 23 saves and made his best save of the night in the first period when he beat down Bryan Lerg's shorthanded breakaway attempt.

In keeping with the night long “bounce theme”, the Bears benefitted from a fortuitous bounce in attaining the game’s first goal at 11:27 of the first period. With the puck high along the boards and just inside the blueline, WBS’ Eric Tangradi attempted to clear his zone, but Christian Hanson was able to get his puck on the attempt and the puck found its way to Kyle Greentree, who was stationed at the top of WBS goaltender Brad Thiessen’s crease. With little room to operate, Greentree stickhandled in a phone booth and skillfully slid a backhand shot behind Thiessen.

The Bears lead lasted exactly four minutes until the Pens’ Brian Gibbons went coast-to-coast with his team in shorthanded mode to knot the contest at one with an unassisted goal, but the visitors quickly regained their one-goal lead only twenty seconds after the Gibbons goal when Matt Ford intercepted a clearing attempt high in the WBS zone and then fluttered a shot on net that bounced off a stunned Thiessen and into the net.

The Pesky Penguins knotted the game at two when veteran Niko Dimitrakos, making his WBS debut, dented the twine 1:06 into the middle frame, converting a nice centering pass from Colin McDonald into his first goal as a baby Pen.

Things quieted down after Dimitrakos’ goal, but the Bears were presented with a glorious opportunity to take command of the affair just past the midway point of the session when they earned a 5-on-3 advantage for 1:09. Before the Bears went to work on their mission, head coach Mark French, with his team mired in a 0-for-6 power drought in this young season, called a timeout to talk strategy with his troops. However, despite the chalkboard talk from their coaches, the Bears squandered the opportunity, mostly as a result of excessive passing and minimal shooting (unofficially three shots on goal during the sequence).

“It’s one of those things that early in the year where you haven’t had a lot of time to practice,” said French. “So I thought it was good to use your timeout to make sure that everybody knew what their responsibilities were. I thought we had some pretty good chances to score on the 5-on-3 but the bottom line is that it didn’t go in. Oftentimes when you don’t score on those opportunities it comes back to bite you, but fortunately today it didn’t."

Christian Hanson, who scored his first goal as a Bear (shorthanded) in Binghamton on Friday, had a splendid chance at his second of the season in the fifteenth minute of the frame, but his breakaway forehand attempt was gloved by Thiessen and the game remained tied entering the third period.

Early in the final frame of regulation, the Bears finally put a positive number on their power play stats with Keith Aucoin doing the goal-scoring honors. Aucoin, after taking a pass from Ryan Potulny down low, had an option to pass to Matt Ford, but decided against that option and buzzed a blast by the glove of Thiessen at 3:33.

“The 5-on-3 was pretty frustrating. We had a couple of good opportunities, but the rebounds bounced to the side and to them. We stayed confident in ourselves and remained upbeat because we knew we’d get another chance, and we capitalized. It was kind of 2-on-1 and I saw him there, but the d-man actually played it really well. My last option is always to shoot, and knew I had to get it up and I was able to get it up over his glove,” said Aucoin.

Notes- The Bears scratched defenseman Zach Miskovic and Brett Flemming and forwards Joel Rechlicz and Graham Mink (veteran scratch).

The Bears have only allowed a thrifty 13 shots against in the first period of their two games this season.

Hershey defenseman Patrick McNeill left for the dressing room area in the first period after absorbing a hard hit, but later returned to the game.

Penguins forward Zach Sill missed the game, serving a suspension for illegal hit to the head that he laid on Miskovic at Giant Center in a pre-season game on October 1st.

Bears Spoils Party, Best B-Sens in Season Opener

It started as a night of celebration for the Binghamton Senators who commemorated their capturing of last season’s Calder Cup, but the Hershey Bears, perhaps feeling a bit “shorthanded” without the hardware in hand from the previous two seasons, scored a pair of shorthanded goals and escaped the Broome County Veterans Memorial Coliseum with a narrow 3-2 victory on Friday night.

The Bears, who were forced to cool their heels for fifteen minutes before the puck officially dropped at 7:20 instead of the scheduled 7:05 start, stormed out of the gate with head coach Mark French’s starting forward line of Kyle Greentree, Matt Ford, and Mattias Sjogren putting a couple of shots on Binghamton backstoppper Robin Lehner before eventually drawing an early power play.

“We talked about keeping our focus, but I attribute it to the veterans in our room who are able to handle things like that, where as a younger team in that kind of situation might cause some distractions,” said French.

“That’s what you want them to do. If you get the honor of being the first line on the ice, especially with a team like ours when we can roll four lines, they need to do that and they did, drawing the penalty and giving us momentum right away.”

After squandering the initial power play as well as a subsequent advantage, the game remained scoreless when the B-Sens went on their first power play at 6:57; however, only 23 seconds into the power play, Hershey newcomer Christian Hanson corralled a loose puck at center ice and then beat Lehner by lofting a shot over his glove hand.

With just over seven minutes remaining in the opening frame, the Bears held a 10-1 shot advantage and their starting goaltender Braden Holtby had about as major of a work load as the Maytag repairman. But that situation changed rather suddenly as the B-Sens found an offensive groove and peppered Holtby with some quality chances, one off of the stick of Jim O’Brien that Holtby halted by making a splendid sprawling save, and another by Pat Cannone that Holtby brilliantly thwarted with a well placed poke check.

“The two preseason games that I played, I had the same situation, but I was able to get a few shots in at the end that got me moving and into it,” said Holtby. “Those are saves that I should make; there were a few more that I made that were things that I was working on, so I was actually more proud of them. I saw the puck well tonight and the forwards and defenseman did a great job all night of fronting everyone and clearing things out in front of the net.”

Also, in the latter stages of the first frame, French did some line juggling by mixing and matching combinations, a scenario that was necessitated by all of the special teams’ play in the opening period.

“We had the power plays early and then some penalty kills, and one thing we wanted to do tonight was to get everybody involved and not have guys sitting. So it was out of necessity rather than trying to get guys going and changing things up. We’re still trying to find chemistry, and those types of situations sometimes allow you to find some natural fits,” said French.

In the second stanza, special teams were in the spotlight again when Chris Bourque scored a shorthanded goal by combining with fellow New England native Keith Aucoin on the strike, and with Binghamton answering Bourque’s tally with a power play goal.

In the latter stages of the stanza, the Bears regained their two-goal cushion when defenseman Patrick Wellar wandered down from his point position to penetrate the Senators’ defense and then deftly deposited a shot by Lerner at 13:46.

“We were told to be really aggressive tonight so I pinched in and was able to keep the play alive,” said Wellar, who scored three goals last season. “As soon as Greentree got the puck, I knew he was going to shoot it. I knew we had numbers so I went to the net. I got kind of lucky because the goalie was already moving and I was able to make a quick move and throw it on net.”

Before the buzzer sounded to signify the end of the second period, Wellar was again in the spotlight. This time, he was in the defensive zone, and due to Holtby being caught wandering behind the net, Wellar got to try out his best goaltender impersonation by stopping a shot that was ticketed for the back of the net.

“Things happen so fast in this small rink; the puck popped loose and we had a little miscommunication,” Wellar said. “Actually, I didn’t see it, but I felt it hit my skate. Sometimes you get lucky and you get to cover up for a miscue, but those are rare.”

The Senators looked to have cut the Bears bulge on a power play in the early stages of the third period during a goalmouth scramble, but after some initial confusion, the officials conferred with the goal judge and an apparent Senators goal was nullified.

“I’m not sure,” said Holtby when asked what happened on the play. “The puck went behind the net and I slid back and he shot it. It went past my first pad, but hit the end of my other pad. I don’t know if I slid into the net with it or not, but I didn’t think there was any evidence that it went in.”

The Senators eventually got their second goal at 16:03 of the third period when veteran Mark Parrish potted a goal from between the circles after receiving a perfect setup from Corey Locke, but Holtby and the Bears held on for the victory.

Notes- The Bears scratched defenseman Danny Richmond and Zach Miskovic and forwards Francois Bouchard and Andrew Carroll.

The conclusion: Winds of change bring Stuccio to Hershey

While Stuccio says that the Hershey job is a dream come true, he also is fully aware of the huge challenge of replacing Walton, who enjoyed amazing popularity while doing the Bears’ games. Though Stuccio gained experience when he replaced Grace, and prior to that by replacing popular meteorologists Berry Bird and Barry Finn in the Scranton area, he said that experience never makes the task of replacing popular personalities any less daunting.

“It doesn’t get an easier, to be quite honest, and it’s no fun at all. You have a target on your back, and you’re under the microscope or whatever cliché you want to use. I realize that’s what it’s going to be like for me in the beginning in Hershey, especially for a guy like me who tries to please as many people as possible and who tries to listen to people’s suggestions about things that I should or shouldn’t do. I love to meet the fans and come to know them on a name basis. With my demanding schedule that can be tough to do, but that’s just the kind of person that I am.”

“John’s been the only broadcaster the team has had since they’ve been in Giant Center, but I consider it an unbelievable honor to be in the long line of famed Bears’ broadcasters. Although I fully anticipate getting some negative press right off the bat because that’s just human nature, I can’t and won’t let that cloud my plans of the way I do games and bring the excitement to the fans with the broadcast.”

So, what should fans expect from Stuccio’s broadcast? Will it be similar to Walton’s, or will it be different? Will he have a signature call like Walton’s familiar, “Good morning, good afternoon, and goodnight!”, or will he wing it on his goal calls?

“I’m just going to come in and broadcast the games to the best of my ability,” said Stuccio. “I’m not going to be a guy who comes in and says ‘I want this going here and that going there.’ John had a format that was very successful and I’m going to stick to that formula. Now as far as the social media aspect, John had no peers in this league and that is even more incredible since he did it by himself. However, I’m going to give it my best effort to try to maintain a high standard of excellence in that category.”

“As far as goal calls, I’ve never really had a signature one, but I have had one or two players that Wilkes-Barre had that when they scored a goal, something came out off the top of my head. As far as John’s calls and what he said, that stuff was awesome; but as far as if I’m going into this with a preconceived call? No, it will be a totally on the fly thing because my philosophy is that’s the way to do play-by-play, adlib and fresh.”

“I try to bring every detail of the game to the listener, and sometimes I go into such great detail that I tire myself out doing so. I’ve learned to dial back on doing that a little so that I can have enough energy to finish the game with the same enthusiasm that I started with. I get very excited calling the action, particularly when it’s a good moment for my team, but I can also get as equally excited when the opposition makes a good play.”

Winds of change bring Stuccio to Hershey

It has been 10 years since a memorable trade has been consummated by the Washington Capitals and Pittsburgh Penguins organizations, and that exchange was a significant one for both clubs as the Pens shipped Jaromir Jagr and another player to the Caps for a trio of players which included Kris Beech.

But over the summer, the clubs essentially created another transaction when Scott Stuccio was named the play-by-play voice of the Hershey Bears, replacing John Walton who was elevated to the position of the radio voice of the Washington Capitals of the NHL.

Stuccio, 38, a lifelong resident of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area who will reside in Derry Township for his initial season of calling the action for the Bears, did not have an AHL team to cheer for while he was growing up as the baby Pens did not join the league until the 1999-2000 season.

“On our cable system, we used to get the Flyers games out of Philly on PRISM and we also got the New York Rangers games out of New York on WWOR. I have three older brothers and because of WWOR showing the Rangers’ games, they all became fans of the Rangers. But I’m eight years behind my youngest brother and WWOR eventually started showing a few New York Islanders games as well. I decided to be different and root for the Islanders and ironically, the first hockey game that I ever saw in person was the Islanders and Rangers in Madison Square Garden.”

Undaunted by the prospect of having no local team to support, Stuccio, despite cell phones being years away from becoming a staple of society, became a bit of a revolutionary by rallying local neighborhood troops for some impromptu pick-up games to fill the void between games on the tube.

“We didn’t have many kids around where I lived who were into hockey, but when the Mylec company started to come out with more street hockey equipment, I started to buy it. Some friends and I would often get games going in the driveway, so I guess you can say I started hockey in our neighborhood. “

After graduating from high school, Stuccio journeyed off to Penn State University where he graduated with a degree in meteorology in 1995. He had his eye on a local job that was attractive to him, but Mother Nature had other ideas and opened up the door to the entertainment field.

“Compared to today, getting a job as a meteorologist was relatively easy back then because there were a lot of jobs open at that time. The National Weather Service still had an office at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton airport and that’s where I wanted to go. TV was the last thing that I wanted to do, but after the big blizzard in 1996, the government shut down the airport and relocated it to Binghamton and various other places.”

Stuccio continued, “So, in the spring of 1996, I was working at the only other job I’ve ever had that wasn’t in TV and radio, at the Wilkes-Barre golf club in Bear Creek, when I was approached by some people at WYOU about the meteorologist job. Keep in mind that this was when the internet was only two years old and I have no idea how they found out my information, but somehow they did. After they twisted my arm several times to come in and try the job out in front of the weather wall, I finally went in and did it, and they liked what I did and offered me the job, and that’s where I stayed for twelve and a half years.”

During the first couple of years of his employment with WYOU, Stuccio and a few of his meteorologist buddies from Penn State took up a rather daring pursuit in the summer months and racked up a plethora of miles on the odometer by storm chasing around America’s heartland in pursuit of tornadoes, all in the name of science.

“Me and a couple of my classmates from Penn State who went to Oklahoma University to get their masters and their doctorates decided to give it a try. We were pretty confined to Oklahoma and Kansas for much of the first year that we did it, but unfortunately there was not much going on that year storm- wise, so we just basically sat around and enjoyed the summer there, which was burning hot.”

“The last year we were up in Minnesota and South Dakota for most of that time, but we ventured down through Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas and a lot of Texas. We ended up driving 8,118 miles in two weeks through 21 states and saw three tornadoes.”

During the latter years of his stint at WYOU, Stuccio became involved with the WBS Penguins, first as an off-ice official, and then he eventually found his way into the broadcast booth.

“I actually started doing color when I was still at WYOU, and I was also an off-ice official for the Penguins. After doing a couple of the Penguins’ games in the color role, I started thinking to myself what it might be like to call a game myself. However, because of dabbling in the color role, I couldn’t do the off-ice official job anymore due to the possibility of bias which you are not supposed to have as an off-ice official.”

Then, his big break in hockey broadcasting came late in the 2006-2007 season when the Pens’ play-by-play man Tom Grace was sidelined with back woes, and the door was opened for Stuccio to live out a childhood fantasy, a pursuit that his TV gig prepared him well for.

“Weather is the only segment of TV news broadcast that is not scripted; it’s totally ad lib on the part of the meteorologist unless the weather person has no knowledge of the science. Otherwise, it’s all off the cuff and it’s filling or stretching time or getting out quickly depending on what somebody is telling you in your ear. I never thought there would be a tie in, but there is.”

“When I was a kid and we were watching the Rangers or Flyers on TV, I would often mute the sound and call the game myself; when I filled in for Tom for those games, I told myself that I could get used to this.”

When Grace left the Pens to pursue other interests at the start of the 2007-08 season, Stuccio assumed the play-by-play position first on an interim basis and then eventually on a full-time basis. However, Grace eventually returned to the club prior to last season, and Stuccio kept his foot in the broadcasting door by serving as Grace’s color commentator for all home games and a handful of road games. He also took on the new job of Director of Communications for the Pens which was a position that he was content to stay in had he not been named to his new position with the Bears.

“That job was a lot of fun, and it also allowed me to do color. So, I can honestly say that I would have been happy to stay there in that job, because I would still be able to do color in that position, and there was always a chance of possibly doing play-by-play again somewhere down the road.”

To be continued tomorrow.......

Winds of change bring Stuccio to Hershey

It has been 10 years since a memorable trade has been consummated by the Washington Capitals and Pittsburgh Penguins organizations, and that exchange was a significant one for both clubs as the Pens shipped Jaromir Jagr and another player to the Caps for a trio of players which included former Herhsey Bear Kris Beech.

But over the summer, the clubs essentially created another transaction when Scott Stuccio was named the play-by-play voice of the Hershey Bears, replacing John Walton who was elevated to the position of the radio voice of the Washington Capitals of the NHL.

Stuccio, 38, a lifelong resident of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area who will reside in Derry Township for his initial season of calling the action for the Bears, did not have an AHL team to cheer for while he was growing up as the baby Pens did not join the league until the 1999-2000 season.

“On our cable system, we used to get the Flyers games out of Philly on PRISM and we also got the New York Rangers games out of New York on WWOR. I have three older brothers and because of WWOR showing the Rangers’ games, they all became fans of the Rangers. But I’m eight years behind my youngest brother and WWOR eventually started showing a few New York Islanders games as well. I decided to be different and root for the Islanders and ironically, the first hockey game that I ever saw in person was the Islanders and Rangers in Madison Square Garden.”

Undaunted by the prospect of having no local team to support, Stuccio, despite cell phones being years away from becoming a staple of society, became a bit of a revolutionary by rallying local neighborhood troops for some impromptu pick-up games to fill the void between games on the tube.

“We didn’t have many kids around where I lived who were into hockey, but when the Mylec company started to come out with more street hockey equipment, I started to buy it. Some friends and I would often get games going in the driveway, so I guess you can say I started hockey in our neighborhood. “

After graduating from high school, Stuccio journeyed off to Penn State University where he graduated with a degree in meteorology in 1995. He had his eye on a local job that was attractive to him, but Mother Nature had other ideas and opened up the door to the entertainment field.

“Compared to today, getting a job as a meteorologist was relatively easy back then because there were a lot of jobs open at that time. The National Weather Service still had an office at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton airport and that’s where I wanted to go. TV was the last thing that I wanted to do, but after the big blizzard in 1996, the government shut down the airport and relocated it to Binghamton and various other places.”

Stuccio continued, “So, in the spring of 1996, I was working at the only other job I’ve ever had that wasn’t in TV and radio, at the Wilkes-Barre golf club in Bear Creek, when I was approached by some people at WYOU about the meteorologist job. Keep in mind that this was when the internet was only two years old and I have no idea how they found out my information, but somehow they did. After they twisted my arm several times to come in and try the job out in front of the weather wall, I finally went in and did it, and they liked what I did and offered me the job, and that’s where I stayed for twelve and a half years.”

During the first couple of years of his employment with WYOU, Stuccio and a few of his meteorologist buddies from Penn State took up a rather daring pursuit in the summer months and racked up a plethora of miles on the odometer by storm chasing around America’s heartland in pursuit of tornadoes, all in the name of science .

“Me and a couple of my classmates from Penn State who went to Oklahoma University to get their masters and their doctorates decided to give it a try. We were pretty confined to Oklahoma and Kansas for much of the first year that we did it, but unfortunately there was not much going on that year storm-wise, so we just basically sat around and enjoyed the summer there, which was burning hot.”

“The last year we were up in Minnesota and South Dakota for most of that time, but we ventured down through Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas and a lot of Texas. We ended up driving 8,118 miles in two weeks through 21 states and saw three tornadoes.”

During the latter years of his stint at WYOU, Stuccio became involved with the WBS Penguins, first as an off-ice official, and then he eventually found his way into the broadcast booth.

“I actually started doing color when I was still at WYOU, and I was also an off-ice official for the Penguins. After doing a couple of the Penguins’ games in the color role, I started thinking to myself what it might be like to call a game myself. However, because of dabbling in the color role, I couldn’t do the off-ice official job anymore due to the possibility of bias which you are not supposed to have as an off-ice official.”

Then, his big break in hockey broadcasting came late in the 2006-2007 season when the Pens’ play-by-play man Tom Grace was sidelined with back woes, and the door was opened for Stuccio to live out a childhood fantasy, a pursuit that his TV gig prepared him well for.

“Weather is the only segment of TV news broadcast that is not scripted; it’s totally ad lib on the part of the meteorologist unless the weather person has no knowledge of the science. Otherwise, its all off the cuff and it’s filling or stretching time or getting out quickly depending on what somebody is telling you in your ear. I never thought there would be a tie in, but there is.”

“When I was a kid and we were watching the Rangers or Flyers on TV, I would often mute the sound and call the game myself; when I filled in for Tom for those games, I told myself that I could get used to this.”

When Grace left the Pens to pursue other interests at the beginning of the 2007-08 season, Stuccio assumed the play-by-play position first on an interim basis and then eventually on a full-time basis. However, Grace eventually returned to the club prior to last season, and Stuccio kept his foot in the broadcasting door by serving as Grace’s color commentator for all home games and a handful of road games. He also took on the new job of Director of Communications for the Pens which was a position that he was content to stay in had he not been named to his new position with the Bears.

“That job was a lot of fun, and it also allowed me to do color. So, I can honestly say that I would have been happy to stay there and continue to do that job because I would have still be on the air, doing color, and there was always a chance of possibly doing play-by-play again somewhere down the road.”

Pens slide by Bears

The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, despite the efforts of Hershey goaltender Dany Sabourin who was outstanding in net for a second consecutive game, swept their two-game weekend exhibition series over the Hershey Bears and downed the home team at Giant Center on Saturday night, 2-1.

Hershey was making their pre-season home debut and roared out of the gate; they mustered the first six shots of the game against Pens’ netminder Scott Munroe and garnered a 1-0 lead on a pretty backhanded shot by Matt Pope only 1:31 into the contest. Pope’s goal was assisted by his linemates, Keith Aucoin and Graham Mink.

Immediately after Pope’s potting, the Penguins made huge strides in closing the shot differential by notching eight consecutive shots on Sabourin. Included among those eight salvos was a penalty shot attempt by WBS’ Chris Barton at 13:56 that was snuffed out by Sabourin, who repelled the bid by kicking it out in a razor like fashion with his right pad. Sabourin stopped all eight shots he faced in the first period as the Bears took a 1-0 lead into the first intermission.

The second period was more of the same for the Bears in the early going, minus the goal, as the home club registered the first five shots on net before Barton stemmed that tide by putting a point blank shot on Sabourin, who squashed Barton’s bid. Barton was the catalyst of another Penguins quality chance later in the stanza when he spearheaded a two-on-one break with Brian Gibbons. Gibbons took the shot on net only to have Sabourin make a sparkling save to preserve Hershey’s one-goal lead heading into the third period.

Altering their strategy in the early going of the final frame, the Pens tied the game at one when Ben Street came down the center avenue and then proceeded to skillfully slide a puck between Sabourin’s right pad and the right post.

With less than three minutes left in regulation, Gibbons went solo into the Bears’ zone and backhanded a shot by the glove of Sabourin at 16:39 to give the Penguins the win.

Notes: The Columbus Blue Jackets have placed AHL sniper Alexandre Giroux on waivers, but it’s highly unlikely that the Bears/Caps will have any interest in the former Bear, primarily due to their already abundant supply of veterans.

Hershey defenseman Zach Miskovic was injured midway through the second period on a hit by Zach Sill that drew blood from the facial area. Miskovic never returned to the game and Sill was given a match penalty for deliberate attempt to injure by referee Ryan Fraser for the hit.

Munroe, who played his college hockey at the University of Alabama-Huntsville and has been the losing goaltender in playoff series against the Bears while patrolling the pipes for the Philadelphia Phantoms and Bridgeport Sound Tigers, finished the game with 34 saves while Sabourin finished with 23 stops.

Pope was among a group of Bears who was assigned to their ECHL affiliate, The South Carolina Stingrays after the game.

Predators Plod Past Capitals

There was a nostalgic feeling at Baltimore’s 1st Mariner Arena last night as professional hockey returned to “Charm City” for the first time since 1997, with the Washington Capitals falling to the Nashville Predators 2-0 in the Capitals’ exhibition opener. Adding to the nostalgia, the notoriously bad ice at Baltimore’s arena also returned and made sustained play on either team’s part nearly impossible.

There were few bright spots for the Capitals on this night, particularly in the first period, but one of them was defenseman, Sean Collins, who registered a solid body belt on Nashville’s Martin Erat on his first shift of the game. He also registered a couple of shots on goal in the frame and has skated in 19 contests for the Caps over the last two seasons.

“Everyone’s really excited to get back into it,” said Collins, who is trying to earn his spot on Washington’s opening night roster. “It’s one of those games that it’s not really hard to get up for. I was excited to get out there and try to make some plays. As the game went on, the ice got a little bit chippier, and it was a little bit tougher to make those plays. It was nice to get a good start.”

“It’s always nice to play with someone you’re comfortable with,” said Collins when asked how much his pairing with Patrick McNeill helped his performance. “I played last year with Patrick for quite a while and we’ve played together for four years. He helped out a lot.”

Although he admitted the ice conditions presented a huge challenge for the players, Collins refused to say the surface was the worst that he has ever skated on.

“It forces you to play a quick puck moving, dump-and-chase kind of game. It seemed like a lot of our passes were bouncing off sticks. It’s hard to handle a puck out there. The conditions made a difference, but both teams were playing on it.”

The Predators struck for their first goal of the game at 17:31 of the second period, with Chris Mueller doing to the honors.

Nashville tacked on another goal in the third period when Colin Wilson was able to slide the puck past goaltender Michal Neuvirth and sprawling defenseman, Patrick Wellar, but Collins provided a bit of comic relief in the frame by getting his stick stuck in the door in the Caps zone, with efforts to remove it proving futile. Eventually, Collins threw in the towel and skated away, sans stick.

“I was trying to go stick-on-puck with that guy and kind of flush it up the boards, and it got stuck in the Zamboni door. I tried to pull on it and it wouldn’t come out. I couldn’t just sit in the corner and yank on it,” he laughed.

Notes: Former Capitals and Hershey Bears defenseman, Tyler Sloan, who signed with the Predators over the summer after being bought out of the remainder of his contract by the Capitals, skated in the contest, as did Kyle Wilson, who spent four years with the Capitals organization before signing with the Columbus Blue Jackets last season.

Capitals’ coach Bruce Boudreau has a bit of Baltimore hockey history in his past, having skated in 17 late season games for the Baltimore Skipjacks in the 1984-85 season, when he joined the club after the culmination of his season in Germany. Nashville head coach Barry Trotz also has a Baltimore hockey background, having served as an assistant coach and head coach with the Skipjacks.

Capitals head athletic trainer, Greg Smith, also served in the same capacity for the Baltimore Bandits in the 1996-97 AHL season when they were the top minor league affiliate of the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.

Nashville netminder, Pekka Rinne, who started the game before yielding way to Jeremy Smith in the second half of the second period, was bested by the Bears in the 2006 Calder Cup Finals when he patrolled the pipes for the Milwaukee Admirals.

The Capitals continue their exhibition season tomorrow night, when they travel to Columbus to take on the Blue Jackets.

Bears Bounce Back to Even Series

The bounces and the breaks, which were both pivotal factors in the Hershey Bears’ loss to the Charlotte Checkers in game one of the series on Thursday night at Giant Center, went the way of the home club on Sunday evening at the same venue, as the Bears evened their East Division Semifinals series against the Charlotte Checkers with a 4-2 win.

In the first period, it was the bounces that were featured as the Checkers’ Jon Matsumoto and Chris Terry both pinged shots off the post behind Hershey netminder Braden Holtby, but it was the Bears who netted the only goal of the frame when defenseman Patrick McNeill’s backhanded shot bounced off the catching equipment of Charlotte netminder Justin Pogge at 12:02.

Fast forward to the second period and it was Bears gathering in their first two-goal lead of the contest, with Andrew Kozek authoring his first playoff goal at 4:25 after a nice keep-in by defenseman Dimitry Orlov, who earned the sole helper on Kozek’s caper.

The two-goal lead quickly wilted down to a single goal when Zac Dalpe dented the twine for the second time in as many games against the Bears, but Brian Willsie willed the Bears back to another two-goal lead at 7:08. Willsie’s initial attempt was blocked by Checkers’ forward Jacob Micflikier, but he then gathered in the loose biscuit and blazed a wrist shot by the glove hand of Pogge.

Dalpe was at it again later in the frame and fired a shot by Holtby with the Checkers on the power play while the Bears’ keeper was apparently distracted by Matsumoto lying in his crease; but the Bears once again bounced back, building their third and final two-goal lead of the game at 17:05, with defenseman Sheldon Souray doing the honors with the Bears in shorthanded mode. Souray, on an odd man jaunt onto the Checkers’ zone, took a short pass from Steve Pinizzotto and then fired a missile by the helpless Pogge, who futilely waved his glove hand at Souray’s salvo.

In the third period, the Checkers picked up their offensive pace, and apparently scored a goal in the final minute of play, but after a consultation among the officials, the goal was waved off due to coincidental minor penalties assessed to Dalpe and Souray.

The series locale switches to the Tarheel State this week, with games scheduled Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday at the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte.

Stuck Helps Bears Keep Eyes on the Prize

When the calendar flips to April after a long winter and an even longer American Hockey League season, it signifies that the start of the Calder Cup Playoffs is right around the corner. For longtime Hershey Bears’ trainer, Dan “Beaker” Stuck, who is entrusted with the care of the players whose every shift, good or bad, potentially turns the course of a series, it also means a lot more.

In addition to his duties with the Bears, Stuck, who has been the Bears’ trainer for the last 27 years, is also the head trainer for all of the entertainment shows at HERSHEYPARK.

Seemingly, that would cause a scheduling conflict with his Bears’ duties, due to the club going to the Calder Cup Finals in four of the past five seasons, but just like every other detail, Stuck has it covered.

“I communicate with Jim Paul, who is the entertainment manger at the park, and if by chance something pops up that needs my attention, I’ll setup my schedule so that I can go over and meet with the performers,” said Stuck. “Hopefully, it’s during an off time over here so that I can go over there and see them and make it back here before it interferes with something over here. If I’m not here, there will definitely be coverage for me.”

Stuck’s duties at HERSHEYPARK are much like his responsibilities with the Bears as he tends to whatever physical aliments need his attention, but over the years, his area of expertise has also evolved into other areas pertaining to medical treatment.

“I take care of any injuries the performers may suffer, so if they get hurt during a show or they need any assistance as far as stretching or getting something taped up, I’m there. It’s not always sports-related stuff, but it may also be something else such as personal issues that may need attention.”

“Just like a lot of the players here in the hockey club who are very young, a lot of the performers are also very young, and some of them are even high school kids getting ready to go into college,” he explained. Sometimes, I wish I’d taken some classes in psychology, because sports psychology is what I do with the hockey team where I’m like a den mother, giving the kids a little of the direction that they need, and it’s also a lot like that over at the park.”

The Bears, who have enjoyed unparalleled success since reuniting with the Capitals prior to the 2005-06 season, capturing three Calder Cup Championship in five seasons, failed to reach playoffs in their final two seasons prior to their Capital affiliation, and Stuck, who has unique insight into the matter, offers up his points of view on the reasons for the Bears’ recent success, as well as for the failures in the final years of the Colorado days.

"I don’t know whether there were more Europeans or more younger guys in the last couple years with Colorado, but maybe their motivations were different than the Washington guys. These guys that come here now, maybe we’re so close to Washington and we’ve had such huge success that I think it rubs off. After not having too much success in the minors with Colorado, I think it hurt them a little bit, but they were such a great organization up top, but maybe it just didn’t flow to us at the bottom.”

This season, the Bears were beset by a bevy of injuries, which often found Stuck in the locker room tending to an existing injury while another injury occurred on the ice. In those cases, Bears’ equipment manager, Justin Kullman, made an ice call to the wounded Bears’ player.

“This is what happens: there’s only one Beaker,” joked Stuck. "The normal thing is to have the other trainer go out to tend to an injury if I’m busy, but the advantage of having Justin go out is that he is someone the players know. We’ve had a lot of injuries this year; it was a tough year. So, if someone goes down and I’m off with somebody, he goes out. If I have injured guys back here I want to follow up with and I’m taking care of someone, I might get out to the bench late, but I always tell the boys that even though I’m not there right away, I’m right in the back so I’m quicker than Life Lion.”

The grind of the regular season guarantees its share of events, like winning and losing streaks, and 40 home dates; likewise, Stuck says he can pretty much know when a particular player is going to come into his office, and what he’s going to need, with a “Groundhog Day” feeling prevailing. However, in the playoffs, Stuck says it’s a totally different animal.

“During the playoffs, I have more responsibilities to make sure there aren’t any excuses. There are things that the players do not need to worry about when it comes to the game time; when they come to the rink, they can be totally focused on the game and they don’t need to worry about anything else.”

A big part of that “no worries” mentally for the players in the playoffs is Stuck’s attention to detail in the spread that is laid out for the players on game days during the playoffs. I can personally attest to the spread consisting of fruit bars, bagels with toppings, as well as a bountiful variety of fruits with an assortment of sports drinks and water.

However, don’t be fooled into thinking the way the Bears organization goes to great lengths to keep their players nourished during the playoffs is the norm around the league. Stuck says that he has had more than a few players with prior AHL playoff experience be in total awe when they see what the Bears do since some other organizations only offer water, and maybe a fruit bar during their other stops.

“They are really catered to here,” said Stuck, who added that the team even goes the extra step to provide a toaster for the bagels. “As much as I’m the trainer, sometimes I feel like I’m the concierge at the Ritz or at the Hotel Hershey. I’m that person that makes sure they have nothing to worry about but the game. I try to make sure everything is exactly the same for them in the playoffs, whether it’s a home game or an away game.”

On the eve of his 22^nd playoff season as the Bears’ trainer, Stuck still seems to be enjoying his job as his constant smile and cheery demeanor certainly attest to, and according to him, retirement is still a number of years away.

“I’ve been fortunate to win so many Cups (five),” said Stuck, who jokingly added, “When we win, it’s all because of the trainers, when we lose, I pity the coaching staff, it’s all them.”

“I look back and think what a great career it’s been, but it’s not over and my candle is burning as bright as it was before. On the day that people come by and look at me and I’m not smiling and enjoying myself, that’s when I’ll know it’s enough. I still love this life every day and I love what I do here, and I want to keep doing it, and age for me is only a number.”

“I’m in my mid-40s, and to be around these younger guys is great because I have to come down to their level and be relaxed and talk about anything that goes on in their lives. I look at it as an opportunity to help them out in life, not just in hockey. I’m still having a good time and looking forward to things to come."

Eventually, Stuck conceded that he knows that someday down the road he will hang up his trusty fanny pack full of medical supplies and make way for someone else to take over his position, and quite possibly his replacement could have a very familiar last name, if the price is right.

“Just like when anybody else who has been in a job a long time goes to retire, there’s always somebody willing and ready to take over. In fact, my son, Dustin, is graduating high school this year and he’s taking his athletic training and then he’ll go to PT school, that’s his goal.”

“I told him it’s great, so I’ll only have a couple more years to wait for you. Then he told me that he doesn’t want my job, but Greg Smith’s job (Washington Capitals’ trainer). He said he wants to make more money.”

Photos Courtesty of JustSports Photography

Pirates Pilfer Overtime Win From Bears

Despite potting a couple of power play markers, it was a couple of golden extra man advantages gone by the wayside that figured prominently into the Hershey Bears’ 4-3 overtime loss to the Portland Pirates on Saturday night at Giant Center.

After opening the score on an early goal by Andrew Joudrey at 1:34, the Pirates tied the game at one on a power play goal by Matt Ellis only to see the Bears regain their lead when Patrick McNeill cashed in on the Bears’ first power play of the contest.

Later in the period, the Bears offered little offense and few shots on Portland netminder David Leggio during a full five minute power play, and also added to their frustrations early in the second period when they failed to capitalize on an extended 5-on-3 situation.

However, the Bears did garner another power play goal later in the second period when Andrew Gordon, who returned to Giant Center ice for the first time in over a month due to injury, lofted a rebound into the upper portion of the net.

However, the pesky Pirates scored the next two goals in regulation and potted the game winner in overtime when Mark Parrish pounced upon a rebound and backhanded a shot behind Bears netminder Braden Holtby who had been returned to the Bears earlier in the day by the Washington Capitals.

Bears Tame Tigers

Bears Mangle Moose

The Hershey Bears, who blew a three-goal lead to the Manitoba Moose the night before and eventually fell in a shootout, avenged that setback by marching over the Moose on Sunday afternoon, 5-1.

With the win, the Bears improved to 17-8-0-2 on home ice, and 31-14-1-3 overall, moving within six points of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins for the top spot in the AHL’s East Division with a date with the baby Pens on the schedule slated for next Sunday.

In a tightly contested opening period, which featured each team registering only 5 shots on net, neither team was able to find the back of the net. With high-scoring forward, Andrew Gordon, out of the lineup, the Bears only managed one shot on net from a forward, with that shot coming from Keith Aucoin at the two minute mark.

In the first minute of the second period, Aucoin drew a hooking penalty against Yann Sauve, putting the Bears, who were blanked in four forays on the power play on Saturday, on their first of the game.

Only 20 seconds into the Sauve sentence, the Bears struck with the extra man when Brian Willsie drifted down from his point position and then wristed a “wicked wrister” by Manitoba netminder, Tyler Weiman, at 1:08, with Aucoin and Patrick McNeill gathering the helpers on the goal.

Shortly after Willsie’s goal, the Moose went on their second power play of the game, but were denied by the Bears and goaltender, Todd Ford, and preserved Hershey’s 1-0 lead. Ford, starting his third consecutive game, made an outstanding glove save on Evan Oberg during the sequence, denying Oberg his sixth goal of the season.

The visitors from Manitoba persisted after their failed power play excursion, eventually getting tying the goal at 5:43 when Bill Sweatt took advantage of a defensive zone turnover by the Bears, converting it into his 13th goal of the season.

Entering the final frame deadlocked at one, the Bears jumped out to an early 4-0 shot lead, and then took the lead for good when Boyd Kane converted from close range at 7:13. Kane’s caper, the Bears’ 100th goal on home ice this season and was registered with each team skating a man short, was the eventual game-winning goal.

Zach Miskovic, Kyle Greentree (PPG), and Ashton Rome tacked on insurance goals for the Bears, giving Ford, who stopped 16 shots, his 15th career AHL win.