Bears Close Regular Season with 4-3 Loss to Phantoms

April 19, 2025

The Hershey Bears (44-20-7-1) concluded their regular season with a 4-3 loss to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms (36-28-6-2) on Saturday night at GIANT Center, as part of the 2024-25 season, presented by Penn State Health.

The Bears concluded their regular-season series against the Phantoms with a 5-4-1-0 record, while Hershey dropped to 24-8-1-3 against Lehigh Valley in the Todd Nelson era.

BOX SCORE

NOTABLES:

• Ivan Miroshnichenko scored twice to close out the season as Hershey's leader in goals with 23, tying the score at 1-1 at 12:25 of the first and 3-3 at 11:57 of the second.
• Luke Philp collected his 10th of the season to tie the game at 2-2 at 6:41 of the middle frame.
• With the score 4-3 in favor of Lehigh Valley, a potential tying goal for Hershey at the 19:06 mark of the third period was nullified after the officials made the ruling that the puck had been knocked in with a high stick.
• Hershey dressed three players making their American Hockey League debuts: forwards Ludwig Persson and Terik Parascak, and goaltender Seth Eisele. Persson earned an assist on Philp's goal.
• Hershey has gone 141-53-12-10 (.704) in three seasons under head coach Todd Nelson, representing the best regular-season mark by a Bears head coach in their first three complete seasons at the helm of the Chocolate and White.
• The Bears hosted their Team Awards Night in a pre-game ceremony. Awards handed out this season and their recipients were:
  • Team MVP - Ethan Bear
  • Milton W. Garland Award (best defenseman) - Ethan Bear
  • John Travers/Steve Summers Award (best plus/minus) - Ethan Bear
  • Arlene Tighe Award (unsung hero) - Bogdan Trineyev
  • Kenny Smith Memorial Player of the Game Award (most Three Stars nominations) - Alex Limoges
  • Dan Sernoffsky Coaches Award - Spencer Smallman
  • IOA/American Specialty AHL Man of the Year (announced April 15) - Jake Massie

SHOTS: HER 33, LV 20

GOALTENDING: HER - Seth Eisele, 16-for-20; LV - Parker Gahagen, 30-for-33

POWER PLAY: HER - 0-for-7; LV - 2-for-6

THEY SAID IT:

Bears head coach Todd Nelson on his surprise at the intensity and physicality of tonight's matchup:
"I was a bit surprised. It kind of got heated up as the game went on. Like I always say boys will be boys, and the very young guys did a good job - we had some young kids out there, and so did they. It was a pretty entertaining hockey game as the game went on, we just couldn't get that fourth goal to tie it up. It came down to special teams tonight, they got a couple power-play goals, they scored a shorthanded goal. That's what it came down to. I thought at five-on-five our team was fine." 

Nelson on if he is relieved with being done with the end of the regular season:
"Yes. Like I'm relieved we got the bye. We had a tough division and it was nice to lock up first in the division last night. It's been a grind this year. Last year, remember we talked about how we didn't have a whole lot of adversity? This year we've had quite a bit. And so I think that's going to help us in the playoffs. It doesn't matter who we play, it's going to be tough no matter what. A lot of teams are probably going to change with their parent clubs not in the Stanley Cup playoffs - you saw what happened here, Ethan Bear got called up. So that could affect us as well. But yeah, I could say I'm a bit relieved just to get that bye. It was close in the standings all year. Like this is a juggernaut for sure."

Nelson on what he hopes to accomplish during the next several days with the first-round bye:
"We're going to follow a template that we had the last couple years, give them a couple days off right now so they can rest up and then we'll go to work and there's enough time for us to really get some conditioning in before we play our first game. The guys all know that they call it hell week next week. It's like [Andrew] Perrott. When he got sent down [to South Carolina] he's still a Hershey Bear, but we thought that he'd benefit from playing those meaningful games in South Carolina since we had off. And he goes, 'Well I don't mind going down because I've heard of Hell Week,' and so that kind of made me laugh. But yeah, I think we'll mix in some hard work with some rest and follow the same template that we had the last couple of years, as it definitely worked."

NEXT GAME:

The Bears have earned a first-round bye for the 2025 Calder Cup Playoffs, and will play the lowest-seeded team that advances in the Atlantic Division Semifinals. Information regarding Hershey's opponent, game dates, and times for the Atlantic Division Semifinals will be announced at a later date. Continue to check HersheyBears.com for the latest updates on the 2025 Calder Cup Playoffs.