Turnovers and squandered scoring chances both contributed mightily to the Hershey Bears demise in the first of six meetings between the interstate rivals this month.
Hershey dominated the first period, out shooting the Phantoms 16-9, with Kyle Wilson’s first goal of the season, the only marker of the stanza. Wilson, who led the Bears with 30 goals last season, confessed that his scoring drought has been on his mind. “Obviously you get frustrated when you go that that long without scoring, when you’re expected to score,” he said. “You just have to stay the course and keep playing your game and it eventually will happen.”
In the second period, it was the Boyd Kane show, when the former Bears’ captain scored a natural hat trick, Kane’s goals, one a tap in on the power play, one when he outraced a Bears’ defender to a rebound, and the third, a deflection from between the face off circles, came at the expense of the Bears’ net minder, Daren Machesney, who could not be fully faulted for any of the markers.
Woods, while not laying all the blame on his goaltender, was far from complimentary. “He hasn’t looked comfortable there (of late); you look at the save percentage, I’m sure that bothers him,” he said. “He’s been able to get some wins; a lot of it was because we were scoring a lot of goals. Our concern is our goals against right now, and it’s just not goaltending.”
While goaltending is certainly a point of concern, special teams play, in which players have stopped buying into the “team concept” and have instead made it about individual effort, has been the bigger problem.
Woods, who, after prior losses, has subscribed to the “lesson learned” theory, pitched a different idea to help his team prepare for tomorrow’s return engagement against the Phantoms: “We’ve gotta forget about tonight, there’s nothing we can do about it, but we can still do something about tomorrow.”