The Cleveland Monsters beat the Hershey Bears (10-5-1-0) 5-3 on Saturday night at Rocket Arena. With the win, the Monsters are now 5-4-3-1 and are currently in sixth place in the AHL’s North Division standings.
Hudson Fasching opened the scoring at 4:06 of the first period with helpers from Jack Williams and Ole Julian Bjørgvik-Holm putting the Monsters ahead 1-0. Jordan Dumais converted on the power play at 7:49 off feeds from Mikael Pyyhtiä and Luca Pinelli sending Cleveland to the first intermission leading 2-0. A back-and-forth transpired in the middle frame beginning with a goal from Pyyhtiä at 2:37 assisted by Pinelli and Hunter McKown followed by a Hershey marker from Ivan Miroshnichenko at 5:48. The Bears added a tally from Ilya Protas at 10:11, but Williams quickly responded with a goal at 10:24 assisted by Justin Pearson. Hershey had the last word of the second period with a marker from Bogdan Trineyev at 17:10 leaving the Monsters ahead 4-3 after 40 minutes. Pinelli added a power-play goal at 7:55 of the third period with helpers from Dumais and Luca Del Bel Belluz bringing the final score to 5-3.
Cleveland’s Ivan Fedotov made 20 saves for the win while Hershey’s Garin Bjorklund made 23 saves in defeat.