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Back to Back Recap Game #13: Bears vs. Phantoms 04.24.09
The Hershey Bears and Philadelphia Phantoms, bitter intrastate rivals since the Phantoms entered the league for the 1996-97 season, had met 173 times before their April 24, 2009 playoff meeting, including 19 fiercely fought playoff matches.
During those contests, there had been numerous notable storylines, including the 1997 playoff series in which the Bears emerged with a hard-fought, seven-game series win that featured a triple overtime game-winning goal by Blair Atcheynum, and the Phantoms’ total domination of the Bears during the years that Paul Fixter ran the Hershey bench. However, none of those meetings held the historical implications of this late-April game in which a potential Bears’ win could have meant the end of the rivalry due to the Phantoms’ impending move to upstate New York beginning in the 2010-11 season.
Often, players and coaches alike will say that the clinching game of any series is the most difficult game to win for many reasons, one of which is the team that is on the brink of elimination faces the harsh reality that another loss means the end of their season and a long summer to dwell on what could have been.
In the first period, it was clearly evident that the Phantoms would not go down without a desperate fight, as they kept the Hershey’s high-octane offense off of the scoreboard even though they allowed four power play opportunities and 11 shots on veteran netminder, Jean-Sebastien Aubin, who was outstanding in the frame.
Seventy seconds into the second period, a chain of events unraveled that unleashed a few frantic minutes of action that promised to change the course of the contest. The sequence began when Jonathan Matsumoto was sent to the penalty box for a hooking infraction. While Matsumoto was cooling his heels in the sin bin, the Bears struck for the first goal of the game when Graham Mink, off a feed from Alexandre Giroux, netted a power play goal at 1:30. Mink’s marker, while giving Matsumoto an immediate “get out of jail” card, was not free, but quite costly to the Phantoms, and put them in a 1-0 hole.
“You just try to get chances, and you never know which one is going to go in,” Mink said. “Giroux made a great play coming around behind the net and I hit it hard, and it went in the net.”
Less than 30 seconds after Mink’s goal, another Philadelphia player was sent to the penalty box, which set the stage for another Hershey power play and gave the Bears a chance to pot another tally to take a commanding 2-0 lead. However, that script was quickly scrubbed when Matsumoto, attempting to atone for his actions, escaped the Bears’ claws and stole a shorthanded breakaway chance on Hershey’s rookie netminder, Michal Neuvirth.
With help from teammate, Chris Bourque, Neuvirth was able to negate Matsumoto’s march, but in the process of denying the bid, referee, Chris Ciamaga, ruled that Bourque’s actions denied Matsumoto a reasonable scoring chance and awarded him a penalty shot.
Matsumoto, who had victimized another Hershey rookie goaltender, Semyon Varlamov, in the regular season on a penalty at Giant Center, was not as fortunate in this attempt as Neuvirth squelched his bid to maintain Hershey’s one-goal lead.
Entering the fifth minute of the second stanza, the Bears still maintained their one-goal lead, but that cushion was put in serious jeopardy when a pair of Bears, including penalty-killer extraordinaire, Jay Beagle, was sent to the penalty box within a span of 19 seconds, giving the Phantoms a lengthy two-man advantage.
Up until the 5-on-3 opportunity for the Phantoms, the Bears had been perfect on the penalty kill in the series, and they maintained that string of perfection when Beagle’s teammates held the visitors at bay with their dogged determination and maintained Hershey’s slim lead, which they carried into the third period.
In the third period, which was the potential last one for the Phantoms in Philadelphia, the visitors, who had been outshot 25-13 through 40 minutes of play, showed a heightened sense of urgency and kept the Bears from increasing their lead while outshooting them at the same time.
Entering the final three minutes of regulation time, the Phantoms, trailing by a single goal, had one last chance to tie the game when Hershey’s Keith Aucoin was sent to the penalty box, giving the Phantoms their fifth power play of the game, but Hershey’s penalty killers were once again able to stave off danger and skate away with a 1-0 win and a series sweep of the Phantoms.
“Everyone on the PK has realized that special teams are going to win your series,” said Beagle, who played a huge part in Hershey’s perfect 22-for-22 performance on the penalty kill in the series. “It’s a lot more important in the playoffs, and we found a way to get the job done. It was like scoring a big goal. The crowd was roaring and they got the team fired up; all the boys on the bench were yelling, and there was incredible electricity.”
Hershey head coach Bob Woods, who had sipped champagne from the Calder Cup both as a player and as an assistant coach with the Bears prior to the 2009 playoffs, in the aftermath of his first series win as their bench boss, smiled while reflecting on his team’s hard-fought victory.
“I told the guys after the game that that’s just a taste; as we keep going here, there’s going to be more fans in here and it’s only going to get better.”
Boy, was he right.
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