Hendrix Lapierre scored a natural hat trick to lead the Hershey Bears (39-9-0-2) to a 4-2 win over the Belleville Senators (23-20-2-3) on Monday afternoon at CAA Arena.
The Bears wrapped up their regular-season series with the Senators with a 1-1-0-0 record. Hershey improved to 7-2-0-0 against the North Division this season.
Hershey opened the scoring midway through the first period when Lapierre knocked in his own rebound past Mads Sogaard at 7:24 for his third of the season. Alex Limoges and Chase Priskie assisted on the goal; Limoges’ assist extended his point streak to eight games.
Lapierre netted a shorthanded goal minutes later at 12:15 when he settled a puck lobbed off Hardy H�man Aktell’s stick and banked it out to the attacking blue line, where Henrik Rybinski centered it back to Lapierre, who then skated in and snapped his second of the afternoon past Sogaard to put the Bears in front by a pair.
Lapierre completed his second career three-goal performance at 2:52 of the second period with a power-play marker that came on a tic-tac-toe play from Pierrick Dubé and Limoges.
Matthew Highmore stopped Hershey’s goal-scoring run with a tally for the hosts at 5:03, beating Clay Stevenson.
The Bears collected another goal with the man advantage at 6:58 of the third period when Ivan Miroshnichenko dug out his own rebound beneath the goal line and flipped a pass back to Priskie, who buried his fifth of the season; Jimmy Huntington collected an additional helper.
The Senators gained an opportunity to close the gap when Bears captain Dylan McIlrath was assessed a five-minute major and a game misconduct at 11:47, and Belleville managed to convert with a goal from Zack Ostapchuk at 15:09, but the Bears shut the door the rest of the way.
Shots finished 26-21 in favor of the Bears. Stevenson went 20-for-22 in the win for Hershey to earn his 17th victory of the season; Sogaard took the loss for Belleville with a 22-for-26 effort. The Bears went 2-for-4 on the power play; the Senators went 1-for-6 with the man advantage.
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