Special teams gave Charlotte a boost out of the gates, with Justin Sourdif pulling off a highlight-reel shorthanded tally and Trevor Carrick hammering home a power-play strike just minutes later. Will Lockwood got a piece of a point shot midway through the middle frame to add another, and the Checkers headed into the second intermission with a three-goal advantage.
That lead would disappear over the course of the third, though. The Bears broke through early on in the period, tacked on another quickly after to narrow the gap and then rode that momentum to even the score with under five minutes to play - sending the contest to overtime.
The Bears kept things rolling in the extra frame, stopping a Charlotte chance and taking the puck the other way to light the lamp and put an end to the contest.
QUOTES
Coach Geordie Kinnear on the turn in the third periodI thought it started in the second period, to be quite honest with you. Obviously you get a reaction from a group that has won a lot of hockey games in the past two years, including this year. I’m going to give them a lot of credit for their response after the first period. In the second period, we started losing focus a little bit and in the third period lost all the focus. They can make a lot of plays and I didn’t think we handled it very well. In the end, I always say that win or lose you’ve got to take lessons from it, and the group knows what the lesson is tonight.
Kinnear on how to handle that situation better
We’ve handled it in the right way (in the past). You look at in Lehigh (last week), it became 4-3 real quick and then we went out and got the next goal. It’s really good leadership in there, a mature group. We have a lot of young, first-year players, but the leadership group, you saw when it got tied that Kyle (Criscuolo)’s line went out and started getting in the offensive zone. You’ve got to give Hershey a lot of credit, and I didn’t really like us, especially in the third period.
