The tight contest saw the Bears claim a 3-2 lead early in the third period and hold on into the waning moments of regulation, but Mike Benning came through in the clutch. With 56 seconds left an extra attacker on the ice for Charlotte, the puck made its way to Benning in the high slot and the blue liner wired it into the back of the net to even the score.
Neither side could find the winner in the extra frame and the contest moved on to a shootout, where Kirill Gerasimyuk would take center stage. The rookie netminder stood tall and turned aside each of Hershey’s first four attempts as the deadlocked shootout headed into round five. Brian Pinho broke the ice for Charlotte with a quick wrister to the back of the net, and with the game on the line Gerasimyuk slammed the door on Hershey’s Nicky Leivermann to snag the victory for the home team.
Brian Pinho and Kirill the Thrill are the heroes in a thrilling shootout win! pic.twitter.com/0bHCG1DRpL
— Charlotte Checkers (@CheckersHockey) January 18, 2026
QUOTES
Coach Geordie Kinnear on the shootoutIt’s a skills competition, and I thought Kirill was outstanding. (Goalie Coach) Sly Rodrigue looks after the shootouts, so credit to him tonight because obviously he watches all the guys shootouts throughout the year and has a good plan going into it.
Kinnear on the game
To be honest, we’re not ever going to play perfect, but I thought from start to finish was a really good hockey game by our group. We wanted to see certain things and we saw those tonight. Regardless of the outcome, I was extremely happy with the effort by the whole group and how we played.
Kinnear on the power play coming together
It's on us too for the chemistry part of it. We haven’t had a lot of practice time to be honest, and we have a lot of new guys that haven’t quite played together. We’ve stuck with the lines over the past little while, so I think they’re developing some chemistry. Credit to that group. We had no goals, the power play gets an opportunity, they got two, so they carried the momentum a little bit. We had a great shift after that, didn’t really love the shift after the shift on the power play where we gave up the goal, but credit to the group because they stuck to the way we wanted to play and got rewarded for it. The power play did a good job tonight, for sure.
Kinnear on Mike Benning’s tying goal
I’m not surprised. If you look at the history of Michael Benning, he’s a big-time player in big-time moments. He’s done that for us a ton. A credit to the whole group though. We had a group out there that had a plan. The other group sat on the bench and watched a little bit, but they went over the boards and got the job done in a big moment. I think you get rewarded not just because of the goal at the end, but it’s how you play throughout the whole game. A good lesson for our group to continue to build. I was extremely happy that the group had a little bit more playoff mindset today. A grind, a closer game. We didn’t score the eight goals but we stuck with it, and that’s how the hockey is going to be in the bigger games moving forward.
