Coming into Saturday’s game against the Providence Bruins, the Hershey Bears had lost five of their last seven games, scoring only nine goals and getting shut out three times during that span.
The team saw an instant turnaround with top prospect centerman Hendrix Lapierre reinserted into the lineup. After losing his spot on the Washington Capitals’ roster to Lars Eller, the 2024 Calder Cup Playoffs MVP was returned to the Bears early last week to play big minutes and re-find his confidence.
He did just that in his Bears season debut, collecting two points in Hershey’s 4-3 shootout win over the Bruins.
“I felt really good,” Lapierre said per the Bears. “It’s fun to get some minutes under me and puck touches and stuff like that. At the start, like the first like two or three shifts, it was a little shaky – it’s a different league, different way of hockey – but after that I thought, obviously there’s things we can work on, but it was pretty good.”
Lapierre centered the Hershey Bears’ first line, skating with veteran forward Spencer Smallman and the Bears’ leading goal-scorer, Ethen Frank. The trio formed chemistry quickly, finding paydirt 13:09 into the first period to put the Bears up 2-0; Pierrick Dubé scored the team’s first goal, his seventh of the year, 6:33 into the game.
After taking a pass from Ethen Frank in the neutral zone, Lapierre gained the offensive zone and curled to the left wing. As he went behind the net, he sent a twister pass to Smallman, who one-timed the puck past Bruins goaltender Michael DiPietro.
Two minutes and 30 seconds later, the Bears struck again to make it 3-0. After the Bruins’ Fabian Lysell picked up an extra minor in a fracas with Vincent Iorio, the Bears’ power play struck while on a four-on-three man advantage. From the top of the right circle, Lapierre sent a pass to Mike Sgarbossa just outside the crease. Sgarbossa, patient, turned and roofed the puck past DiPietro for his fourth of the season.
The Bears could not close out the game in regulation, however, giving up three consecutive goals to the Bruins (Patrick Brown, Riley Tufte, and Patrick Brown) in the first and second periods. After a scoreless overtime, Luke Philp won the game in the shootout for the Bears.
In the locker room, Hunter Shepard awarded Lapierre the Bears Head as the team’s player of the game.
“All right, boys, way to stick with it,” he said. Maybe not our best effort, but tomorrow we’ll f***ing come out strong. Good job, boys!”
Sunday is Hershey’s Teddy Bear Toss Game and is a rematch against the Bruins at Giant Center.
“I thought he was good,” Bears head coach Todd Nelson said. “He’s a talented player, he can skate really well and he set up Smallman on the one goal where he drove wide and found him in the slot. I thought as the game went on, he wasn’t used to the minutes that he played tonight because in Washington, he was playing maybe seven or eight minutes. He played quite a bit tonight. So we knew as a coaching staff, that’d be a concern. But I thought he handled it fine. He played in overtime and I thought all in all it was a pretty good game for him to come get his confidence and he is only going to get better.”
Lapierre agreed with Nelson that there was room for improvement.
“I feel like we generated a lot, missed a lot of chances, feel like we could have had a couple [additional] goals tonight and didn’t give up much, except for maybe two or three shifts,” Lapierre said. “So it was good to finally play and then win a game. I know the guys were eager to win a game, so it was really fun.”
The Bears’ first line combined for 14 shots on the evening, with Lapierre firing five on net himself.
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— Hershey Bears (@TheHersheyBears) January 4, 2025
