Bad Bounces: Hershey Falls in Game One of Calder Cup Finals

HERSHEY, PA – Daniel Zarr celebrates his third period goal in Lake Erie’s 4-1 win in Game One of the Calder Cup Finals. (Kyle Mace / Chocolate Hockey)

Wednesday night marked the twenty-third time in Hershey Bears history the Calder Cup Finals have come to visit Chocolate Town, USA. The Bears faced off against a team from Cleveland for the first time since 1954, looking to claim the first game of the 2016 Calder Cup Finals.

Hershey and Lake Erie were going blow for blow in the first period. Justin Peters came up with two big breakaway saves to keep the game tied up at 0-0.

Jakub Vrana would go bar down on a beautiful pass from Chris Bourque. His eighth goal of the playoffs would give Hershey a 1-0 lead into the locker room.

But Hershey’s defense would struggle the rest of the night. Two more breakaways for the Monsters in the second period, including one that Daniel Zarr would send past the Bears netminder to tie the game.

Just over five minutes into the third, Aaron Ness would try and deflect a puck away on a shot from Trent Vogelhuber, but the puck would take a funky bounce right between Peters’ legs and give the Monsters their first lead of the game.

Lake Erie would extend their lead after Ryan Stanton would turn over a puck under pressure right in front of Peters and Zarr would net his second of the game and make it 3-1.

Marcus Hannikainen would send home Lake Erie’s fourth goal of the game as Hershey would go on to lose 4-1.

“It was a close game,” Lake Erie head coach Jared Bednar said postgame. “It was a lot closer than what the score would indicate, no question about it. I think overall, I like the way we played tonight. We had had pretty good jump, we did a good job getting in and out of our zone. Offensively, we created some things on the rush and had some extended zone time – not as much as I would like – but I thought we did a good job of getting out of our zone and winning wall battles and keeping their chances to a decent amount.”

“I thought both teams had their opportunities to score,” said Bears head coach Troy Mann. “Up until their second goal, felt the positioning of our guys on the winning goal was good. Nesser’s doing the right thing, it goes off his stick; to me, that was a little bit of a lucky goal. The turnover by Stants on goal three was probably the back-breaker for us in terms of trying to come back from 3-1.”

This is not the first time the Bears have been down 1-0 in a series these playoffs. After going down 1-0 to both Portland and Wilkes-Barre, the Chocolate and White did come back to win those series. “It’s one game,” Garrett Mitchell said. “We’ll be fine here. We got a great team in there and we all believe in each other.”

“It’s the playoffs. It doesn’t matter if you lose in overtime or 4-1,” said Vrana postgame. “We’re going to look forward. We’re going to come stronger next game.”

PHOTOS:

Vrana celebrates Hershey’s only goal of the game.

Zaar scores his second goal of the game.