Even coming off a Game 2 win, the Hershey Bears had changes in store for Game 3.
Head coach Todd Nelson altered a portion of his forward lines for Game 3. Rookie Ethen Frank, without a playoff goal after leading all AHL rookies with 30 tallies in the regular season, came out of the lineup. Shane Gersich dressed for the first time since May 4, when the Bears closed out their Atlantic Division semifinal series against Charlotte. Mason Morelli, who had been part of an excellent fourth line, moved up to take Frank’s place on a line with Mike Vecchione and Henrik Borgstrom; Gersich filled Morelli’s fourth-line spot.
One line that did stay intact featured Aliaksei Protas, Hendrix Lapierre and Sam Anas. Anas picked up an assist on the game’s opening goal and then popped in one of his own on the power play early in the second period to help Hershey to a 4-2 win and a 2-1 series lead.
Now the Bears have an opportunity to put the Amerks in big trouble with another win tonight in Game 4 at Rochester. The teams will then go back to Hershey for Game 5 on Wednesday.
After being disappointed by their play in Game 1, a 5-1 loss, the Bears have put together back-to-back tight performances against a Rochester team that had won seven games in a row. They also handed the Amerks their first home loss of the Calder Cup Playoffs.
“I think we still had a good attitude the day after that [loss],” said Anas, who was a Calder Cup finalist with Springfield last season. “It’s kind of like a cool confidence in a sense. You just can’t get too high, too low, so I think we’ve been approaching these days pretty similarly.”
That approach also means that they were not reading too much into their Game 3 victory, either.
“It doesn’t feel too much different, but it feels good,” Anas said of his club’s mood on Sunday.
The Bears, accustomed to playing to big crowds at home, also went into sold-out Blue Cross Arena and handled the environment.
“It was awesome,” said Anas, who faced a similiar situation in last year’s conference finals at Laval’s Place Bell. “It’s kind of fun to be the enemy on the road. I think we really fed off that. It’s just a good energy in the building.”
The Amerks have not played behind a series since fighting off elimination three consecutive times in the best-of-five North Division semifinals against Syracuse.
Head coach Seth Appert and his staff sat down after the second period on Saturday and reconfigured the team’s forward lines. Hershey has adjusted to Rochester’s speed and shifted the past two games to a grinding battle. Appert decided that he needed to spread out some of his club’s heaviness across his forward lines and generate more sustained time inside the offensive zone.
“It was better,” Appert said of the third period after those adjustments. [Hershey] is the best defensive team in the league, so it’s not surprising. None of this is surprising. This is exactly the team we thought we’d be playing.
“We’ve got to score more dirty goals to be able to get to them.”
― Patrick Williams
