Schaefer Shines Despite 3-2 Shootout Loss to Pirates
It took a shootout for the Portland Pirates to defeat the Hershey Bears.
The Bears traveled up North yesterday to play a rare regular season game against the Portland Pirates. Mathieu Perreault gave Hershey the early lead with an absolutely beautiful goal. He skated the puck from one end of the ice to other and blew right through the Portland defense. It was one of those goals that you could watch a replay of over and over again.
His goal stood as the only one through two periods of play.
It was a fairly quiet game except for whenever Sheldon Souray and Tim Conboy were on the ice at the same time. Conboy had a controversial hit on Maxime Lacroix that Souray took offense to and they dropped the gloves. Souray had the takedown. Thankfully, Lacroix was okay.
During the next period, the teams started shoving at the whistle and Conboy and Souray decided to have a rematch. If Conboy was looking for redemption, he didn’t get it because Souray delivered a vicious knockout punch.
The Bears started the third period on the man advantage but the Pirates shut them down. Right after the successful kill, the Pirates tied the game up when Mark Voakes fought through the play and Nolan Schaefer had to face him alone. He tried him best to stone him but was unsuccessful.
The Pirates scored again during a late period power play. Schaefer tried to grab the shot in his glove but he ended up just tipping it and it bounced over him and into the net. Just when it started looking grim, the Bears had a 4-on-3 power play at the very end of the period. It took a couple attempts but Patrick McNeill tied it up with a nice shot down low. Spurred on by this goal, the teams went to overtime. When that didn’t solve anything, we moved on to the shootout.
It was ironic that the game came down to goaltending since the goalies from both teams were playing great games. Unfortunately, David Leggio came out on top today, stopped all four of the Bears shootout attempts. The Pirates scored twice on Schaefer and the Bears lost 3-2.
Guess we’ll have to wait another day for Mark French’s 100th career win…
Tonight’s Notes
- Just some suspension news: Chris Durno of the Norfolk Admirals has been suspended for three games because of his hit on Keith Aucoin last Saturday.
- Speaking of suspensions, the Bears obtained Andrew Kozek from the Chicago Wolves in exchange for Josh Godfrey. Kozek will not play until Friday at the earliest because he received a two game suspension because of his conduct during a game against the Milwaukee Admirals. We’ll have more on the clear day roster and addition of Kozek later.
- Since Steve Pinizzotto did not make the trip due to injury, the Bears needed another forward so they signed Andrew Sarauer (from the Reading Royals) to a professional tryout contract.
Lines and Pairings:
Kane – Perreault – Bouchard
Greentree – Willsie – Kugryshev
Lacroix – Joudrey – Rome
Sarauer – Carroll – de Kastrozza
Souray – Orlov
McNeill – Collins
Wellar – Fahey
Actual three stars of the game:
1. Corey Tropp (POR)
2. David Leggio (POR)
3. Nolan Schaefer (HER)
Sweetest Hockey On Earth’s three stars of the game:
1. McNeill: scored the game-tying goal
2. Schaefer: stopped 28 of 30 shots
3. Perreault: scored Hershey’s first goal