Bears Drop 5-0 Decision to Crunch in Return

February 8, 2025

The Hershey Bears (28-13-5-0) fell in their return from the AHL All-Star break by a 5-0 score to the Syracuse Crunch (19-16-6-3) on Saturday night at GIANT Center, as the club continued its 2024-25 season, presented by Penn State Health.

The defeat marked an end to Hershey's season-high four-game home win streak. The season series against Syracuse now stands at 2-1-0-0, with the visiting team winning each game.

BOX SCORE

NOTABLES:

• Hershey is now 17-10-0-1-1 in its first game following the AHL All-Star Classic since the modern iteration of the event was introduced in the 1994-95 season.
• Syracuse call-up Spencer Kersten, skating in his fourth career AHL game, netted his first AHL goal - and the eventual game-winner - to give the Crunch a 1-0 lead at 9:52 of the first period.
• Justin Nachbaur made his Bears debut. The forward scrapped with Syracuse's Jujhar Khaira at 10:11 of the first.
• Mike Sgarbossa skated in his 700th pro game; 295 of the veteran forward's games have been with Hershey.
• The Bears dressed 17 skaters with defensemen Jake Massie (lower body) and Jon McDonald (illness) and forwards Brennan Saulnier (lower body), Henrik Rybinski (upper body), Grant Cruikshank (illness), and Bogdan Trineyev (illness) listed as unavailable.
• Hershey's 16 shots on goal matched its lowest single-game output for the season.

SHOTS: HER 16, SYR 32

GOALTENDING: HER - Clay Stevenson, 27-for-32; SYR - Matt Tomkins, 16-for-16

POWER PLAY: HER - 0-for-4; SYR - 1-for-3

THEY SAID IT:

Bears head coach Todd Nelson on his thoughts regarding tonight's result:
"Well, I definitely didn't expect that. The guys had four days off, we had two really good practices, I felt good about the game tonight, a lot of energy, and we were dead from [the beginning] - just no life, it was truly an embarrassing effort. When you look at the start of the game and the first goal, we turned the puck over and it's a goal that probably should not go in. Then we score on ourselves twice in the second period and now we start feeling sorry for ourselves. It's unacceptable and it's happened now twice in the last couple weeks. I'm not going to use an excuse, the flu bug going around or we played short tonight - I don't care. The bottom line is that the guys that we count upon to go out there and do a job to provide offense for us were not even in the building tonight. They didn't even show up - our best player was [Justin] Nachbaur tonight - he got called up from South Carolina, played like he cared, and nobody else did. I was looking for guys to throw on the ice in the third period, and nobody wanted to be on there. It's embarrassing. That's pretty much it in a nutshell."

NEXT GAME:

The Bears continue the 2024-25 regular season, presented by Penn State Health, when they host the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins on Tuesday, Feb. 11 at 7 p.m. at GIANT Center for Hersheypark Pass Night. All fans in attendance will receive a 2025 Hersheypark Ticket, valid for one-day admission through June 30, 2025. Purchase tickets for the game by CLICKING HERE.