The Hershey Bears might have played the best game of the series against the Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins with their Game Three performance. After trailing 2-0, they controlled the puck, pace of play, and were the more physical team, scoring three unanswered goals to take a lead and the momentum heading into the third period.
Yet, they let one slip away. The Penguins battled back with a goal in the final three minutes of the third and another in overtime to win 4-3 and take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five series. The two goals by the Penguins can be deemed lucky bounces or off penalties that weren’t called. However, the Bears put themselves in that spot to begin with, allowing their opponent to come back into a game they shouldn’t have.
Now, the Bears have their backs to the wall. It’s familiar territory for the veterans who have been on the Calder Cup-winning teams. Even last year’s team was down 2-1 in the series to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms and came back to win in five. They’ve been in this situation before.
The young players haven’t, at least at the American Hockey League level. They live for this moment where the pressure drives them to play their best. That said, it’s an uphill battle to flip this series, considering how the Bears have played in this series and how they’ve looked all season.
The Prospects Can Still Take Over This Series
Half of the Bears' offense has come from their top line in the Calder Cup Playoffs. The Andrew Cristall, Ilya Protas, and Bogdan Trineyev line has scored seven of their 14 goals and have combined for 12 of the team’s 32 points. In short, they drive the offense.
The Cristall-Protas combo is particularly tough to stop and has been all season. The rookies lead the Bears in points and are two of the best prospects in the Washington Capitals system. They can take over a game on any shift.
The question for head coach Derek King is whether he leans on his top line to win Game Four. Presumably, he does even if he wants to roll with four lines and not overwork one or another. “Our young guys are putting up points but I don’t want to tire them out,” he stated after Game One. The problem for King is that the Bears have their backs to the wall and on the brink of elimination, he must turn to his stars to save the day, and that means giving them more ice time.
The other layer to this is whether King line matches for Game Four. The Bears are the home team and have the last change, allowing them to put their top line on the ice for a pivotal faceoff and a favorable matchup. King talked about avoiding this strategy and how it disrupts the flow of the game. However, this might be something he turns to if he’s desperate and the Bears need a big goal.
Bears Set Themselves up to Fail in Game Three
The Bears held a 3-2 lead in the final minutes as the Penguins pulled Sergei Murashov for the extra skater. Instead of keeping their foot on the gas, they played tight in their zone and let the clock wind down. This strategy worked in Game Two but they had plenty of close calls in the 2-1 victory. It backfired in Game Three as Avery Hayes fired the puck to the net to force overtime. “A little miscommunication in the corner, maybe we should have flipped it out and lived to fight another day but we turn it over, then a guy beats us to the net, and nobody picks him up,” King mentioned after the game on where things went wrong.
Sure, the two goals the Penguins scored to tie and win the game can be seen as bad luck. The Hayes shot was redirected into the back of the net, and the Rutger McGroarty overtime winner was a deflected point shot that never hit the net but hit the crossbar and bounced over the white line and out of the goal. It’s bad luck but teams create their own good or bad luck. “When you put pucks to the net, and it seems like good teams do that a lot, you find a way to score,” King added after the game.
The Bears were playing not to lose when they should have been playing to win, and playing that way leaves room for costly mistakes. That’s been the story all season, where mistakes cost them at the worst times. Sometimes it’s penalties and other times it's defensive breakdowns. Against the Penguins, they would lose track of the forward trailing the play or skating to the slot, resulting in an open look and easy goal. It’s how Tristan Broz found Mikhail Ilyin for the second Penguin goal of Game Three. “We can lose our F3; we've got to track harder. They jump in the play all the time, so we can’t just stand there and watch them skate by,” King mentioned after the game.
Sometimes the Bears players try to make the highlight play when they need the simple one. In the third period, Cristall wrapped the puck around the net and tried to elevate it past Murashov for the highlight reel goal. He didn’t have to. Instead, it gave the Penguins possession at a time when the Bears just needed to wind the clock with a strong offensive zone presence. It’s one of the big adjustments for this team as they’ll aim to play a clean game with their backs to the wall.
Possible Adjustments For The Bears
If the Bears are putting most of their eggs into one basket, with their offense dependent on the top line, they might look to bolster the second line. The best way to do that is to move Brett Leason, who has two goals in this series, to the Henrik Rybinski and Ivan Miroshnichenko line. That will give King two scoring lines to rely on for goals while also providing a bottom six that can check and defend.
The other lineup adjustment might be on the defense. The Bears need a defenseman to drive the play at the point, and Louie Belpedio, who is a veteran shutdown option, isn’t putting pressure on the Penguins from the blue line. David Gucciardi or Corey Schueneman might.
The lineup changes are one thing but the big change will be how the Bears play Game Four. King will treat it like an elimination game because, frankly, it is. That means having the best skaters on the ice when the game is on the line. It means having the Bears apply pressure even if they have the lead.
“We still haven’t played our best yet and showed what we can do,” Ness noted after the latest game in a conversation with The Hockey News. If their best game is coming, it’s coming in Game Four with their season on the line.
And the Penguins will be prepared. They’ve seen the Bears enough times this season to know what’s coming. It’s why Game Four should be a great one in a series that’s featured back-to-back one-goal games.