On this Black Friday, the Hershey Bears traveled to Albany, shopping for their 7th consecutive win without the core four that were missing in Wednesday’s game against Binghamton. Making Hershey’s task more difficult was the recall of their captain, Bryan Helmer, to the Washington Capitals. However, the team relied on solid defense, limiting the Albany River Rats to 20 shots on goal, and an all around team effort to get the job done, escaping the Capital District with a 3-2 overtime win.
Albany struck first at 8:09 of the first period when Jakub Petruzalek’s seemingly stoppable wrist shot from just inside the blue line managed to sail past the stick side of Hershey goaltender, Simeon Varlamov. Varlamov and his teammates didn’t have much time to dwell on the soft goal, as they had to exterminate three successive Albany power plays, the first of which came only 33 seconds after the goal. Albany coach, Jeff Daniels, lamented his team’s squandered opportunities to add to their one goal lead.
“We had a chance to go up two, maybe three, goals in the first period and we didn’t really generate much. We had a had a couple good looks, but the goalie made the saves,” said Daniels.
Hershey’s Alexandre Giroux tied the game at 1, with his 14th goal of the season, from Andrew Gordon and former River Rat, Keith Aucoin, at 4:30 of the second period.
Albany regained the lead when they converted on their first opportunity of the second period when Greg Amadio was sent off the ice for elbowing at 17:43. While the goal was initially credited to Nicolas Blanchard, it was later ruled that the puck deflected into the net off the skate of Harrison Reed.
It took the Bears over half the third period to answer Reed’s goal, when Kyle Wilson finished off a pretty tic-tac-toe passing sequence with Matthieu Perreault and Sean Collins, when he lofted a shot over the stacked pads of Rats’ net minder, Justin Peters, to tie the game at two.
“There was a 2-on-1 in front, and there was a D there,” said Wilson, who marked his 125th successive game with his 8th goal of the season. “I looked back door for Gordo (Andrew Gordon), and the D went down to cover that and I guess the goalie looked to see that, too. He had to cover the back door and then I turned and shot it, and he had already gone down to play it safe, and it worked out for me.”
Albany’s Petruzalek had the opportunity to be the hero with 3:30 left in regulation, with the only thing that stood between him and the net was Varlamov. On this occasion, the Russian rookie repelled Petruzalek’s bid to send the game into overtime.
Francois Bouchard, along with his linemate, Perreault, who usually play set up to Oskar Osala’s goal scoring exploits, provided the game winning goal at 2:25 of the overtime session, after Josh Godfrey started the play in the neutral zone.
“It was a nice play by Godfrey, and I think he tried to shoot or something and I got a loose puck. I think Perreault passed it to me,” said Bouchard, who scored his first game-winning goal. “I tried to just put the puck on net because we only had five minutes to score a goal to win the game, and it worked OK.”
Perreault, who has excelled in 5-on-5 situations, revealed that he likes the extra space provided when there are less bodies on the ice.
“It’s a lot more room on 4-on-4,” he said. “We can skate more and try to do some plays that we work on in practice.” Tonight for the Bears, practice made perfect.