The night after acing the first part of their playoff pretest when they downed the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, the Hershey Bears finished with a perfect score for the weekend on Sunday evening when they caged the Bridgeport Sound Tigers and clawed their way to a 3-2 victory.
The Sound Tigers, who had tallied five power goals among their six goals scored against the Bears entering the game, made it an even half dozen when NHL veteran, Jon Sim, cashed in with his team enjoying a 5-on-3 advantage at 15:28.
Chris Bourque, who took the second penalty that gave Bridgeport the 5-on-3 advantage, wasted little time in redeeming himself, tying the game at one, less than a minute after the Sim strike at 16:22.
“It wasn’t a good penalty at all, and I kind of had to bail myself out,” said Bourque. “Gordon threw a backhander at the net, and I don’t know what happened to the goalie. I think he might have fell or something. I had the whole net to shoot at and I just put it in. I’m happy that I did that to get that off my chest and get the boys on the board.”
Oskar Osala, who was denied on the doorstep by Bridgeport goaltender, Michael Mole, in the opening minute of the second period, found a pot-of-gold at the end of his rainbow wrister at 13:32.
“I definitely should’ve scored on the first one instead of the second one, but I’m happy it went in,” Osala said.
Osala’s goal came just 12 seconds after Hershey had successfully killed off three consecutive Bridgeport power plays in the second period. The Bears’ penalty killing unit, which came into the weekend dead last in the league, showed drastic improvement in the last two games.
“We had a really good penalty kill meeting before Saturday’s game, and all the penalty killers knew we had to step up,” said Jay Beagle, an integral part of the unit. “Frenchie did a great job breaking down our opponents power plays and letting everyone know what their assignments were.”
Alexandre Giroux took another step toward the 50-goal mark when he netted his 47th goal of the season on the power play at 16:11 to give Hershey a 3-1 lead.
With Hershey’s alternate captain, Dean Arsene, in the penalty box, Steve Pinizzotto cleared the puck over the glass for a delay of game penalty, giving the Sound Tigers another 5-on-3 chance for just over a minute and a half.
It took Bridgeport 40 seconds to capitalize on their opportunity when Andrew MacDonald slapped home his 7th goal of the season behind Bears’ netminder, Daren Machesney.
Machesney, making his first start since March 1st, stopped 36 shots during the contest, only allowing the two 2-man down goals. Machesney has backstopped the Bears in all three of their triumphs over the Sound Tigers.
“It was pretty easy to get fired up for a game like this, especially with how big it is. If you can’t get up for a game like this, I don’t think you’re in the right profession,” said Machesney, who matched fellow goaltender, Simeon Varlamov, with his 18th win of the season.
Osala, who reached the scoresheet in both weekend matches, was impressed with how his team pounced upon the opportunity to meet their challengers head-on.
“We really stepped our game up,” said Osala. “Personally, I was really fired up for this challenge with the playoffs coming up. Everybody was a little extra fired up for these games.”
If this weekend’s spark was any indication of what lies ahead for the Bears in their playoff pursuit, the AHL would be wise to beware of the potential of a raging inferno.