Bears Close Road Portion of Season with 5-1 Loss to Phantoms

April 12, 2025

The Hershey Bears (43-19-6-1) suffered a 5-1 loss to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms (34-28-6-2) on Saturday night at PPL Center, as the club continued its 2024-25 season, presented by Penn State Health.

The loss snapped Hershey's win streak at four games, to match a season high. Despite the loss, the Bears' Magic Number to clinch the Atlantic Division title was reduced to two points as a result of the 3-1 loss suffered by the Charlotte Checkers against Utica earlier this afternoon.

The Bears finished the road portion of their 2024-25 regular season schedule with a record of 24-6-5-1 (.750) to finish with a better road points percentage than their previous franchise-best of .736, set last season (24-7-0-5).

Hershey's record against Lehigh Valley dropped to 5-3-1-0. The two teams will meet once more this season, on Saturday, April 19 at 7 p.m. at GIANT Center. 

BOX SCORE

NOTABLES:

• Bears defenseman Aaron Ness sustained an upper-body injury in the first period and was ruled out for the remainder of the game.
• Matt Strome scored Hershey's lone goal when he cut Lehigh Valley's lead to 3-1 when buried his eighth of the season at 6:43 of the third period from Dalton Smith.
• Washington Capitals prospect Leon Muggli made his American Hockey League debut with Hershey. Muggli became the first 18-year-old (18 years, nine months, three days) to play in a game for the Bears since Jonas Siegenthaler (18 years, nine months, 17 days) made his debut on March 23, 2016 at Lehigh Valley, and he is the youngest player to dress for Hershey since Garrett Mitchell (18 years, seven months, four days) debuted on April 6, 2010 at Syracuse.

SHOTS: HER 34, LV 24

GOALTENDING: HER - Clay Stevenson, 19-for-24; LV - Cal Petersen, 33-for-34

POWER PLAY: HER - 0-for-3; LV - 0-for-2

THEY SAID IT:

Bears head coach Todd Nelson on what contributed to tonight's loss:
"The first two goals were the result of two mistakes and two goals ended up in the back of our net. Then the third goal was off Vecchione. Just things didn't go our way tonight. But I thought the effort was there. The guys gave us what they had and it was one of those games that just didn't go our way."

Nelson on the play of Leon Muggli while making his North American pro debut:
"I thought he was good. He was moving his feet well. There's [some mistakes] that are correctable. He's just 18 years old, you know? I thought he handled himself fine against a pretty heavy hockey team. He hasn't been in the lineup; I thought he did fine."

Nelson on how he feels approaching the postseason with the current group:
"I think we have another gear, to be quite honest. The guys understand that, too. I'm happy with the results, but we can be better."

Matt Strome on what contributed to the loss:
"Just our turnovers were killing us. We actually played a pretty good game, we all thought, but they got some good goaltending and we made too many mistakes that ended up in the back of our net. So we've just got to clean that up and we'll be good to go for Wednesday [against Syracuse]."

NEXT GAME:

The Bears continue the 2024-25 regular season, presented by Penn State Health, when they return home to host the Syracuse Crunch on Wednesday, April 16 at 7 p.m. at GIANT Center for Fairview Golf Course Back-to-Back Calder Cup Champions Golf Chip Giveaway (first 4,000 fans in attendance) and Berks Dollar Dog Night. Purchase tickets for the game by CLICKING HERE.