Well the Bears are off again it the race for the Calder Cup, this time we’re facing a less commonly seen team the Portland Pirates. Yet our Hershey Bears aren’t that unfamiliar to the Portland fans, since they were Washington’s farm club last year and needless to say that our guys made quite a homecoming.



Beginning the series in Portland Wednesday night our key guys played their game the whole night. Hershey started off the night with Brooks Laich scoring his fourth goal of the post season with assists going to Jakub Klepis and Joey Tenute. This was the spark that started what turned out to be a 5-0 win for Hershey. Brooks Laich made a big presence with his two goal night as did Tomas Fleischmann with two goals and one assist, Kris Beech with one goal and one assist, and Graham Mink with two assists. Yet the biggest star out of Game 1 was Freddy Cassivi stopping all 33 shots fired at him and making his way to a third shutout in four games. With key guys injured in our defense department many of our younger guys stepped up to fill the roles. Jeff Schultz and Jeff State (who was brought up from Reading) proved themselves even playing some penalty kill and power play time. Marty Wilde provided an assist on Laich’s second goal. Mike Green and Dean Arsene both made their presence known by shutting down Portland’s forwards even though both were hurting during practices during the wait for the next series.



Thursday Portland came to play more so than in game 1. They were the first one to score in the first period from Shane O’Brien. This goal went unanswered until the third period with under ten minutes left to play Dave Steckel scored his sixth goal of the post seasons getting assists from Mike Green and Boyd Gordon. This forced the game to go into overtime where just two minutes in Graham Mink scored his sixth goal winning the game for Hershey to allow them to go up in the series 2-0 and heading home for the weekend’s game. Cassivi once again was in my opinion was Hershey’s star once again, stopping 31 of the 32 shots Portland fired at him in the four periods played.



Game 3 and 4 are this weekend now lets just hope that Hershey can make it a sweet 12 and run into the Finals.