Bears Break Out for 4-1 Win Over Crunch

Pierrick Dube and Jimmy Huntington each contributed a goal and an assist and Riley Sutter scored twice to lead the Hershey Bears (43-11-0-5) to a 4-1 win over the Syracuse Crunch (34-19-4-2) on Saturday night in front of a crowd of 10,559 at GIANT Center.Bears Break Out for 4-1 Win Over Crunch

Hershey earned a split of its regular-season series with Syracuse with a 1-1-0-0 record; the Bears improved to 9-3-0-2 against North Division clubs.

BOX SCORE

Syracuse opened the scoring midway through the first period when Gabriel Fortier stuffed home a shot past Clay Stevenson at 12:45.

The Bears drew level early in the second period when Huntington won a face-off at the left circle in the offensive zone back to Dube, who snuck his 25th of the season past Brendan Halverson at 4:38.

Hershey took its first lead of the night at 17:36 when Huntington knocked in a Dube rebound on the power play for his 14th of the season. Garrett Roe earned a secondary assist on the goal.

Sutter deflected a Vincent Iorio shot from the point past Halverson 34 seconds into the third period to extend the lead to 3-1. The goal was Sutter’s seventh of the season and his second in as many nights; Matt Strome collected a helper as well.

Sutter capped the scoring with an empty-net tally from Bogdan Trineyev and Strome at 17:07.

Shots finished 20-16 in favor of the Bears. Stevenson went 15-for-16 in the victory for Hershey; Halverson took the loss for Syracuse with a 16-for-19 effort. The Bears went 1-for-3 on the power play; the Crunch went 0-for-3 with the man advantage.

With Hershey match report