Despite the impeding wrecking ball, the Philadelphia Phantoms showcased the reason they are a team to be reckoned with in the last game played at the Wachovia Spectrum, billed as ‘America’s Showplace’. The Phantoms handily defeated the Hershey Bears, 5-2, beginning with three unanswered first period goals.
David Laliberte and Jonathan Matsumoto, Philly’s scoring co-leaders against the Bears this season, added to their numbers with Matsumoto lighting the lamp by tucking the puck inside the left post behind Hershey netminder, Michal Neuvirth at 7:44.
Rob Sirianni, increased the Phantoms’ lead to 2-0 with his 12th goal of the season when he redirected a point shot from former Bear, Danny Syvret, with the Phantoms on the power play at 16:11.
Less than three minutes later, and with less than two minutes remaining in the period, Sirianni netted his second power play goal of the period at 18:43.
Hershey, even though getting questionable credit for Karl Alzner’s lob into the Philly zone from deep in his own zone that was ruled a shot on goal, was only able to manage a feeble four shots on Philly netminder, Scott Munroe, in the first period.
“We knew they were going to come out hard, and to be honest, you could use a lot of excuses: a packed building and they were fired up and trying to make the playoffs,” said Bears’ alternate captain, Dean Arsene. “You could use every excuse in the book, but it really comes down to we didn’t show up in the first period.”
The napping Bears awoke from their first period slumber in the second period, clawing back into the game on an Andrew Joudrey goal at 8:13. Joudrey, who scored his first goal of the season against the Phantoms at the Spectrum, wristed a shot over the sprawling Munroe, who failed to recover his positioning after Patrick McNeill’s point shot went wide of the net and found it’s way onto Joudrey’s blade.
Just over a minute after the Joudrey goal, Neuvirth made a brilliant blocker save on Sirianni to allow the Bears to keep their momentum. However, a soft shot from along the boards, off of the stick of Jonathan “Momentum Killer” Kalisnski, somehow eluded the glove of Neuvirth, effectively ending Hershey’s second period surge.
The AHL’s leading goal scorer, Alexandre Giroux, gave the Bears a glimmer of hope, whipping a wicked wrister rocket past Munroe at 6:03 on the power play. Unfortunately, two goals would be as close to the Bears would get to closing the gap on this evening.
Sirianni capped off his hat trick with an empty net goal at 18:56 to put the exclamation point on the Phantoms final win on home ice.
Heading into tomorrow’s rematch at Giant Center, Arsene realizes that the Bears need to step up their game if they want to avoid the panic alarm going into the playoffs.
“I think this was a wakeup call, to be honest with you. We’ve had some good games against them, and whenever we’ve taken them lightly, they’ve taken it to us pretty badly, so hopefully everybody wakes up and realizes they clinched a playoff spot. They’re not going to want to stop there. They’re going to want to send a message for the first round.”