Bears react to weekend sweep of Lehigh Valley – Carbery, Hobbs, Pinho, and Barber
Sunday night rounded out a quality weekend for the Hershey Bears, sweeping a two game set against Lehigh Valley. After the game, we caught up with Bears head coach Spencer Carbery, defenseman Connor Hobbs, forwards Brian Pinho and Riley Barber to talk about Hershey’s weekend performance.
Carbery on the importance of Hershey’s two-win weekend: “Our biggest weekend no question thus far. I talked a little bit about last week. Our mindset is a little bit different than maybe in years past. We’re in a spot where we have to win now and we need results now. We just don’t have the luxury of having off nights or so-so efforts. We’ve put ourselves behind the eight ball so for us to get two gigantic wins against Lehigh, who sits above us, who are missing some guys right now, to get us two out of three on the weekend, tough road trip. We’re creeping in there. We’re nowhere near where we need to be, but we’re taking small steps to try to get back in this fight.”
Hobbs on using these two wins to start putting more wins together: “We can just build off of the good plays we make, the good reads we make. It’s a lot nicer during the week watching a positive video clip of yourself rather than learning from a critical video clip. It’s nice to see when you’re doing things right. And we did a lot of things right these last two nights. It just makes hockey fun.”
Pinho on the confidence of the team as a whole right now: “It’s a good feeling. We’re confident in one another and we feel that when we play our game and that we’re a very hard team to beat. That’s just the focus 24/7.”
Barber on getting four key points against a division rival: “We know where we’re at in the standings. We walk by it every day in a locker room. We know that we need to get some wins to climb and I think this weekend was a good starting point. At the beginning of the month, we set a goal for ourselves in the next 10 games and I think this weekend was definitely the right track.”
Hobbs on getting back into game shape after injury: “Playing shape isn’t really a problem with the coaching staff that we have. We’re working hard. The guys that aren’t playing are doing really tough skates and it’s pretty easy to stay in shape that way. But like you said with a three and three, it was tough to get right back into that. But I think it’s a good thing. That’s better than just having a two-game weekend and maybe having time to think too much and this weekend we did have time to think and I think that helped us.”
Pinho on his goal Sunday, the eventual game-winner: “I kind of saw a little five-hole space and got a little lucky that it snuck through. It’s a good draw by [Jayson Megna] and then Hobbsy got it down there pretty quick.”
Barber on his season so far: “I’m getting to a point on that I kind of understand the league and kind of where I’m at. Playing with [Mike Sgarbossa] and finding that feeling on the power play. Right now I’m really feeling good about myself and taking take care of myself off the ice and doing the right things day in day out. Sometimes they go in, sometimes they don’t. I think right now I’m kind of on a roll. When that happens you just want to keep playing games.”
