Hershey Bears: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly 12/19/19

HERSHEY, PA -- The Hershey Bears (14-9-5) find themselves a perfect 6-0-0 in the month of December, moving into third place in the Atlantic Division after two more wins this past weekend.

The Good

December has been very kind to the Hershey Bears as the team remains undefeated in the month thanks to a pair of wins this past weekend over Bridgeport and Lehigh Valley. Saturday night at Giant Center, not much went wrong in Hershey’s 5-2 victory over the Sound Tigers. The Bears PK continued to sparkle as the team killed off all six of Bridgeport’s Power Plays. Additionally, the Bears went 1-for-2 on their man-advantage thanks to Matt Moulson’s second period insurance marker.

Brian Pinho opened the scoring on his 100th AHL game and assisted on the game’s final tally, a goal from Liam O’Brien, but for Pinho, the big picture and the team were more important than individual milestones.

After the game, he said, “Yeah, I mean it's exciting 100 games in pro hockey is a lot and I’ve loved every second of it, (but) I’m glad we got the win tonight.”

Mike Sgarbossa and Philippe Maillet also recorded goals.

In Sunday’s game, Hershey scored a goal in all three periods with Axel Jonsson-Fjallby scoring late in the first, Garrett Pilon scoring off the opening faceoff of the second, and Bobby Nardella recording his first professional goal on the powerplay in the third.

The Bad

Phil Maillet (-6), Matt Moulson (-5), Kale Kessy (-3), and Chris McCarthy (-2) are four experienced forwards whose production this season has not lived up to expectations.

While McCarthy (33 points in seven seasons in the AHL) and Kessy (29 points in seven seasons in the AHL) aren’t known for their scoring prowess, Maillet (103 points in four seasons) and Moulson (284 points in the AHL in six seasons) were expected to put up big numbers offensively for the Bears who lost the bulk of their scoring from a season ago.

“It’s critical. Really, really tough to rely on two or three guys to do all of the scoring and produce offensively,” Carbery said of needing depth scoring on lines other than the top line.

Both Maillet and Moulson recorded markers this past weekend, but Hershey needs to get consistent scoring from more than just Sgarbossa’s line in order to continue to climb in the standings.

The Ugly

Once again, the Bears found themselves attempting to fend off a pair of 5-on-3 PKs, but unlike last weekend, the Bears were unable to kill off Sunday night’s as Andy Andreoff put a stop to Hershey’s PK streak. As in past games, the Bears recorded multiple penalties, testing the will of the PK unit.

With 12 more PKs this past weekend, the Bears have now been at least one man down 111 times this season, which is middle-of-the-pack in the league, but the pride the PK unit takes in killing off those chances does not escape the notice of Carbery and his staff.

“It’s a small group within the team,” he noted of the PK unit. “(They) want (the PK) percentage to rise; they want to kill them off and be the difference in the game,” Carbery said following Saturday night’s game.

Carbery's Corner

On Hershey’s Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony:

“It’s a great event. I think all of our guys even learn something when they watch all the stories about the history, some people have had very successful hockey careers, what they say about Hershey, what Hershey means to them. So that’s neat, kids like Cody Clark, Riley Sutter are like ‘Wow, a guy from Saskatchewan, British Columbia played in Hershey for five years did XYZ,’ really, really cool to see and neat for all of our guys to experience it.”

On Vitek Vanecek who went back-to-back again this weekend:

“It's a tough decision, but like I was saying last week, we’ve just been doing this rotation for so long that I thought, ‘Maybe you know what, let's try something different. Let’s give one of the guys an opportunity to play back-to-back games, to get real hot here, and get on a roll and get back into the net the next night,” and both guys understand that. You know on the one hand I’d like to see Cops play, but our schedule doesn’t set up great because it's a full week off then two games for the weekend, so it's unfortunate cuz, obviously I’d like Cops to play a game, but at the same time it’s good for Vitek. He gets on a roll, he plays, he’s had some success against Lehigh. He played fantastic tonight.”

On the next-man-up mentality in Hershey and what that means when guys come back from injury:

“Things happen all the time, so if you worry about what might be next month, you feel like you're just spinning your tires. Right now we've got a good number guys, some guys hopefully that will get healthy and push other guys into the lineup. By then more stuff may have happened injury wise or playing wise, so we’ll worry about that. But the guys are playing well. They’re playing hard right now, they’re playing for one another, they’ve bought into the way that we need to play and obviously you’re seeing the results.”