Saturday, December 13, 2014

Third Period Goals Sink Bears

And so it continues. Another stellar performance by Philip Grubauer. Another goal by Stan Galiev, yet an overall lack of team offense. Despite being evenly matched against the Crunch last night, 3 goals in the last 5 minutes of the game were Hershey's undoing. Oh yeah, and Syracuse only had 4 total shots in the third period. So far this season, the Bears are 0-3 against Syracuse and have been outscored 13-3.

Stan Galiev now has 8 goals on the season and is second on the team behind Kris Newbury's 10. It seems like Galiev is becoming Hershey's version of Ovechkin. Just as long as he keeps putting up goals like he's has. On the power play setup, Troy Mann has plugged Galiev into the "Ovi spot".

And it payed off with the Bears only goal last night. Galiev's one-timer from right above the left face-off dot powered its way past the Syracuse goaltender's glove to make it 1-0 Bears.Philip Grubauer was again superb in net once more facing at least 30 shots in a game. Even though he gave up 3 goals and an empty netter, Grubauer was especially sharp in the 2nd and 3rd periods when the Crunch held extended offensive pressure in the Bears' zone.

The second period saw Grubauer fight off 14 shots by the Crunch including a late period 2-on-1 in which the rebound just rolled past the left post to keep it tied 1-1.

The effort of the night came from Liam O'Brien who fought Dalton Smith early in the 3rd period. Both are pretty evenly matched in size and weight. While O'Brien got in some really good shots, he took a couple big hits from Smith and was bloodied up quite a bit. About half way through you could tell O'Brien was dazed from a few punches from Smith, but O'Brien battled and threw some good ones of his own.

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