The Hershey Bears won their fifth-straight game overall and their sixth consecutive on the road after defeating the Cleveland Monsters 5-2 at Rocket Arena, Thursday.
Ivan Miroshnichenko made his grand return to the lineup after missing 12 games due to an upper-body injury. The talented winger skated on an all-Russian-speaking second line with Ilya Protas and Bogdan Trineyev and wasted no time scoring his first goal of the season. Wide open in front of Cleveland’s net, Miro took a crafty pass from Ilya Protas to bury a shot past Monsters goaltender Ivan Fedotov to make it 1-0 Bears.
The Bears quickly added to their lead after scoring consecutive power-play goals 1:49 apart.
Taking a perfect centering feed from Andrew Cristall, Spencer Smallman buried a layup as he was crashing the net to make it 2-0 at 10:18 of the first period.
Ilya Protas extended his goal-scoring streak to four games after scoring from the top of the circles on their next man advantage. After Protas’s first shot was blocked, he quickly fired another at the net that found paydirt.
Monsters winger Justin Pearson grabbed some momentum back when he scored with two minutes remaining in the first period to narrow Hershey’s lead to 3-1. After a scoreless middle stanza, Bogdan Trineyev scored his fifth goal of the season, showing some patience in front of the net and curling around Fedotov for the put-in. The goal put Hershey up 4-1, 7:04 into the third period.
Luca Pinelli scored 1:49 later to narrow Hershey’s lead back to two, but that was all the offense they could muster.
Andrew Cristall, in a foot race, scored an empty-netter with 3:01 remaining to seal the 5-2 victory. The goal gave him his third multi-goal game of the season thus far.
Clay Stevenson made 32 saves on 34 shots to earn his sixth victory of the season and his sixth straight overall. Stevenson’s six wins are tied for fourth-most in the AHL.
Post-game, Bears head coach Derek King praised his team in the locker room, but also thinks there’s another level the Bears can still reach.
“Trust me, talking to our staff, you guys have so much more,” King said. “I don’t think you guys understand how good you guys can be as a team. And I don’t think we’ve hit that yet. We’re getting there. But you guys, you can be such a really good hockey team. You gotta believe that. We believe it. You gotta believe it, and stick together here, ok?”
Hershey did suffer one spate of bad news. Defenseman Cam Allen suffered an upper-body injury and did not return to the game.
The Bears were also without Henrik Rybinski (upper-body injury), Leon Muggli (upper-body injury), and Nicky Leivermann (lower-body injury) who were scratches.
