Even though the faces keep changing, the results stayed the same as the Hershey Bears reeled off their tenth straight win at Giant Center, downing the Hartford Wolfpack, 4-2. Six new faces have graced the Bears’ roster since the inception of the club’s ten game winning streak, including that of Maxime Lacroix , who started the scoring just 5:41 into the first period, when he netted his first regular season AHL goal.
Lacroix, after centerman, Andrew Joudrey, had won the face-off in the Bears’ offensive zone, launched a shot from a seemingly impossible angle that escaped the grasp of Hartford goaltender, Matt Zaba.
“It was just putting it at the net,” Lacroix said. “I was looking for a rebound to just put it in his pads and get a rebound to Gordo (Andrew Gordon), but the puck went in. Some hard work, nice passes, and simple play paid off.”
The game was delayed for almost ten and a half minutes while over 6,000 stuffed animals were collected from the ice, due to Hershey’s annual Teddy Bear Toss. There was no more scoring until 5:16 into the second period, when Francois Bouchard finished off a perfectly executed 2-on-1 rush with linemate, Matthieu Perreault. The play originated with a diving poke check from Oskar Osala in the neutral zone, putting Hershey up, 2-0.
“He (Osala) had a really good play on the boards and he tried to chip it to Perreault,“ said Bouchard, sporting a gash under his right eye that was the result of Perreault’s skate incurred during the goal-scoring celebration. “We went down two against one and I knew that Perreault was going to pass it to me so I just tried to give him the right lane. He made a great pass and I took a great shot.”
Hartford scored just over six minutes later, cutting Hershey’s lead to 2-1, and wrapping up the scoring for the second period.
At 3:55 of the third period, Andrew Joudrey was whistled off for high-sticking, giving the Wolfpack, who scored all three of the their goals on power plays the previous evening, an opportunity to tie the score. However, the Bears took full advantage of their “disadvantage”, when Patrick McNeill scored the team’s second short-handed goal of the season just over a minute into the penalty kill.
“I just rimmed it around to Gordo,” said McNeill, after scoring his first goal of the season. “He made a good play by chipping it to the middle and it just opened up some room for Wilson to skate with it. I saw that they had four guys caught low, so I thought I might as well jump in to the play and make it an odd-man rush. Wilson made a nice pass to me, and I pretty much just closed my eyes and shot it.”
Hartford clawed their way back into the game when Tommy Pyett capitalized on a Perreault turnover, making it a 3-2 game. Former member of the Wolfpack, Alexandre Giroux, made sure that one goal would be as close as his former club would get on this night, beating Zaba on a breakaway attempt, after intercepting a pass in the defensive zone, putting his team up by two.
“I read the play, and I think it was obvious he was going back to the other guy for a one-timer. So I just cut the pass and took off,” said Giroux, who scored his league-leading 18th goal of the season. “I saw a little hole low on the blocker side, and I put it in.”