CHECKERS CHALLENGE SERIES

Those boos were long gone going into this intermission. That pass managed to reach Malenstyn at the Charlotte blue line, and he finished off the breakaway, snapping a shot blocker-side past Guzda for a 2-2 game with 15.5 seconds left in the second period. With only Mayhew back to defend a developing two-on-one chance, Snively won a puck battle at center ice and dove to nudge ahead a pass. Bears forward Joe Snively, who had taken both of those late penalties, bolted from the penalty box into the Hershey zone, forced a turnover, and sent the Bears up ice. Instead the Bears managed to fend off the Charlotte push, limiting the Checkers to four shots, and killing off the four minutes of shorthanded time. With a Checkers power play featuring the likes of Carlsson, Cory Conacher and Gerry Mayhew, the game might quickly get out of reach. For a few minutes, at least.īut then back-to-back Hershey minors left Charlotte with a chance to break the game open late in the period and grab back the game’s energy. Some of the pent-up tension finally left the building. Ten minutes into the middle period, forward Mason Morelli cut down the left side, fought off Charlotte defenseman Lucas Carlsson, drove the net, and somehow squeezed the puck past netminder Mack Guzda. ”īut the Bears stuck with the game despite its many frustrations. “The first period was not pretty at all,” Nelson said. First, however, came the boos from the home crowd at the end of the opening period. “Hopefully that will spark the other 19 guys,” Bears color commentator and AHL Hall of Fame member Mitch Lamoureux said on the team’s radio broadcast.

Malenstyn pursued Checkers defenseman Santtu Kinnunen into the left corner for the loose puck and unleashed a hit that lifted Kinnunen off his skates and dislodged a pane of glass behind the Charlotte net.

CHECKERS CHALLENGE SERIES

Relentless on the puck throughout Game 3, Charlotte continued to have the faster feet, better back pressure and stronger reloads in Game 4, and all of Hershey could feel it.įourteen minutes into the first period and with one shot on the scoreboard for the Bears, a routine outlet pass skipped over Beck Malenstyn’s stick inside the neutral zone, just another in a series missed passes and fumbled pucks that were plaguing the Bears. Charlotte took a 2-0 lead in the opening 7:54 and limited the Bears to all of two first-period shots. The first period of Game 4 did nothing to lift Nelson’s mood, to say nothing of the increasingly restless and vocal Giant Center crowd. A 2-1 loss in Game 3 had left normally even-tempered head coach Todd Nelson steamed.Ī “pretty ugly game for our hockey team,” Nelson termed it. A winner-takes-all game was starting to feel like an increasingly likely and uncomfortable possibility for the Hershey Bears last week.Īfter two efficient road wins to begin their best-of-five Atlantic Division semifinal series with the Charlotte Checkers, the Bears had run into some serious resistance trying to finish the series back on home ice.

Checkers challenge