By Michael Heilman
The Lehigh Valley Phantoms played the Hershey Bears for the first time this season Saturday night at the PPL Center in Allentown, PA. When these two in-state rivals get together, anything can happen.
The Phantoms got on the board a little over three minutes into the first period when Phantoms forward Maksim Sushko scored his first AHL goal with assists by Philippe Myers and German Rubtsov to give the Phantoms a 1-0 lead. Two minutes and nine seconds later, the Bears Beck Malenstyn tied the game up at 1-1 on a short-handed goal. The Phantoms then regained the lead 2-1 with under six minutes left in the period when Kyle Criscuolo passed the puck to Joel Farabee, who scored shooting the puck in the upper left net. Kyle Criscuolo got the assist in Farabee’s goal. With under three minutes left in the first period, the Bears would tie the game up again 2-2 on a power-play goal by Mike Sgarbossa with assists by Christian Djoos and Travis Boyd. The first period ended in a 2-2 tie.
After a scoreless second period, the Phantoms regained the lead once again 3-2 four minutes into the third period as Isaac Ratcliffe scored with both Kurtis Gabriel and Mikhail Vorobyev getting assists. The Bears would once again tie the game up at 3-3 as Travis Boyd scored the goal with Matt Moulson and Mike Sgarbossa getting the assists. The game remained tied the rest of the third period and were going to overtime.
In overtime, the Bears Travis Boyd scored his second goal of the game with one second left in overtime to give the Bears a 4-3 win with assists from Christian Djoos and Mike Sgarbossa.
The three stars of the game were Bears center Travis Boyd, who has two goals and one assist, Bears center Mike Sgarbossa with one goal and two assists, and Phantoms forward Isaac Ratcliffe with one goal. Bears goalie Vitek Vanecek made twenty-three saves out of twenty-six shot attempts while Phantoms goalie Jean-Francois Berube made twenty-eight saves out of thirty-two shot attempts.
The Phantoms will be back in action Friday night as they welcome the Binghamton Devils to the PPL Center at 7:05 pm.
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