Sabourin rebounds, shuts out Crunch, 3-0

Brian Willsie skates away with the puck. Photo by Lauren Long / The Post-Standard.

Clearly Syracuse is Dany Sabourin‘s favorite city.

At the end of October, Sabourin recorded his first win of the season in an overtime victory against the Syracuse Crunch. And tonight, he gets the first shutout for any Hershey goaltender this season. He wasn’t really challenged for the first two periods, seeing only 13 shots after 40 minutes. By the third period, Syracuse realized they were in trouble and starting firing more. He was even able to stop a brief 5-on-3 penalty kill near the end of the game. Kind of funny how yesterday we were calling him out for throwing the game away and today he proves how good he can be.

Speaking of back and forth playing…the Bears have won every other game for the past seven games. Coincidence or are the Bears just good at rebounding from losses?

The game was scoreless after the first period. Ashton Rome finally broke the scoring drought with his fourth goal of the season. He had a fantastic assist from Dmitri Kugryshev. Andrew Gordon now leads the team with eight goals after he scored on the power play. Brian Willsie added on another insurance goal during the third period, assists going to Mathieu Perreault and Gordon.

Semyon Varlamov is scheduled to start in goal tomorrow, giving Sabourin time to rest and bask in his shutout glory. Let’s hope for a little consistency from the Bears and hope that they record back-to-back wins for the first time since October 29th.

Tonight’s Notes:

• The Bears had yet another 5-on-3 that they couldn’t convert on. Tim Leone had this upsetting statistic for us: “That’s 4:18 of 5-on-3 in the last 4 periods for Bears without a goal.” Let’s work on that next.
• Two fights tonight. The first (and probably the better) was Phil Oreskovic vs Jon Mirasty. Pretty good fight, as most fights involving Mirasty are. At the end of the fight, Oreskovic motioned to Mirasty as if thanking him for a good fight. A lot of respect there.
• The second fight pit Patrick Wellar against Leigh Salters. For a guy who isn’t really an true enforcer, Wellar certainly can hold his own.
• Gordon sits at 6th in the league for points with 8 goals and 10 assists. He’s now tied with Keith Aucoin.
• As long as I’m already talking about Gordon, he has recorded 62 shots on goal so far this season. Think this guy wants to impress the Caps brass?

Lines and Pairings:

Willsie – Perreault – Gordon
Greentree – Beagle – Bouchard
Kane – Joudrey – Pinizzotto
Rome – Bruess – Kugryshev

Yeo – Fahey
Nycholat – Miskovic
Wellar – Oreskovic

Actual three stars of the game:

1. Dany Sabourin (HER)
2. Brian Willsie (HER)
3. Andrew Gordon (HER)

Sweetest Hockey On Earth’s three stars of the game:

1. Sabourin: shutout, 24/24 saves
2. Willsie: goal and primary assist
3. Rome: first goal of the night and GWG