The Cleveland Monsters beat the Lehigh Valley Phantoms (21-21-2-2) 5-2 on Saturday night at the PPL Center. With the win, the Monsters are now 24-15-6-1 and are currently in third place in the AHL’s North Division standings.
Cleveland opened the scoring 53 seconds in off the stick of Will Butcher with Justin Pearson and Mikael Pyyhtiä on the helpers.
Lehigh Valley scored two unanswered from Oscar Eklind at 8:34 and Tucker Robertson at 18:25 to give the Phantoms the 2-1 lead through 20 minutes.
The Monsters rallied with three straight goals in the second stanza with Pyyhtiä tying the game 2-2 at 6:36 of the period on the power play with Luca Del Bel Belluz and Luca Marrelli tallying assists.
Hunter McKown scored for Cleveland at 7:19 unassisted for the 3-2 lead, followed by Pearson scoring shorthanded at 12:45 with Corson Ceulemans on the lone assist to send the Monsters into the second break up 4-2.
At 19:52 of the third frame, Brendan Gaunce added the empty netter to seal the 5-2 victory for Cleveland.
Cleveland’s Ivan Fedotov stopped 33 shots for the win while Lehigh Valley’s Carson Bjarnason made 23 saves in defeat.
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