BEARS DEFEAT SENATORS, CLINCH EAST DIVISION TITLE

April 18, 2015

HERSHEY, Pa. – Nate Schmidt, Chris Conner and Casey Wellman scored the Hershey Bears’ three unanswered goals in the third period and Pheonix Copley made a personal season-high 42 saves in regulation, helping the club defeat the Binghamton Senators by a score of 3-2 on Friday night at GIANT Center.  With the win and a 4-0 loss by the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins to the Albany Devils, the Bears have clinched the 2014-15 East Division regular-season title.
 
In a period in which Hershey dominated play, the Senators would come out the leaders.  With one second left on the clock, Chris Wideman deposited his own rebound behind Copley after breaking in alone out of the penalty box, and the Sens took a 1-0 advantage into the intermission.
 
Copley stopped all 17 shots he faced in the second period, keeping his team in the game, and keeping the score at 1-0 in the third.
 
The Bears began their comeback with a four-on-four situation.  With Steve Oleksy and Matthew Zay in the penalty boxes, the Bears worked the puck around the offensive zone.  O’Brien would carry the puck from left circle to right, and leave a pass for Schmidt in the slot.  Schmidt, left alone, skated in and snapped a shot past the glove of Scott Greenham at 7:28.
 
The Bears earned their second power play of the night shortly afterward, and took just six seconds to claim their first lead of the night.  Off of an O’Brien faceoff win, the puck came to Schmidt for a slap shot that was padded aside by Greenham.  The rebound came right to Conner for the slam-dunk at 10:31.
 
Wellman scored the necessary insurance goal at 11:27, when he took a pass from Jakub Vrana and skated down the right wing.  He took a slap shot that dropped under the blocker of Greenham for his 25th goal of the season.
 
Alex Guptill ended up scoring a power-play goal with 10.1 seconds remaining in the game, when he backhanded the puck past Copley in a goal-mouth scramble.
 
The Bears hung on from there for the win, and improved to 45-22-5-3 (98 points) on the season.  The club also improved to 25-7-3-1 at home.
 
Copley improved to 16-4-3 on the season, while Greenham made 36 saves on 39 shots and fell to 14-11-2.
 
Hershey remains home tomorrow, April 18 for the regular-season finale against the Lehigh Valley Phantoms.  All fans in attendance will receive a scratch-off ticket containing a special prize for Fan Appreciation Night.  Additionally, the annual player awards ceremony will take place before the game, and thus the faceoff will be pushed to roughly 7:15 PM.  The game is sold out.
 
Individual tickets for the first home game of the 2015 Eastern Conference quarterfinal round are on sale at the GIANT Center box office or online at HersheyBears.com.  The date and opponent will be determined at a later date.

NOTES: G Philipp Grubauer was recalled to the Washington Capitals earlier in the day…The Bears scratched C Travis Boyd, LW Philippe Cornet, D Christain Djoos, RW Kevin Elgestal, D Tomas Kundratek, D  Jon Landry, C Chandler Stephenson and C Sam Warning…Senators RW Darren Kramer served the first of a two-game suspension…The Senators also scratched G Chris Driedger, LW David Dziurzynski, D Patrick Mullen, D Daniel New and D Michael Sdao… Hershey finished the night 1-for-3 on the power play and 2-for-3 on the penalty kill… G Pheonix Copley improved to 4-0-1 against the Senators in the season series…C Jim O’Brien extended his point streak to three games (2-3-5)…C Jakub Vrana recorded his second point in as many nights (0-2-2)...The Bears earned their first East Division title since the 2009-10 season.