Bears Skate Past Monsters for 3-2 Win

January 10, 2026

Grant Cruikshank broke a 2-2 tie in the third period with a shorthanded goal to lift the Hershey Bears (17-14-1-0) to a 3-2 win over the Cleveland Monsters (16-12-4-1) on Saturday night in front of a sold-out crowd of 10,554 at GIANT Center.

Hershey improved to 2-1-0-0 in the season series against Cleveland, and will conclude the series with the Monsters on Sunday, Jan. 11. The victory also gave the Bears their first three-game winning streak on home ice this season.

BOX SCORE

NOTABLES:

• Tate Singleton struck at 5:33 of the first period to give the visitors the opening goal.
• Louie Belpedio knotted the game with a shot from the top of the right circle at 12:26 with his fifth of the season, giving the defenseman his second consecutive game with a goal and his third tally over his last five contests. Belpedio's goal was assisted by Andrew Cristall and Matt Strome. Cristall's assist gave him his 26th point of the season (5g, 21a) to take over the team scoring lead, which he shared with fellow rookie Ilya Protas entering the game.
• Bogdan Trineyev gave Hershey its first lead of the night at 1:05 of the third period with his eighth of the season from Ivan Miroshnichenko and Aaron Ness.
• The Monsters tied the game with a power-play goal from Luca Del Bel Belluz at 11:45 of the third period, but Grant Cruikshank restored the lead with a shorthanded goal at 13:39 for his fifth strike of the season, from Corey Schueneman and Eriks Mateiko. For Schueneman, the helper marked his 100th career AHL assist.
• Ness suited up in his 460th game with the Chocolate and White, passing Chuck Hamilton for sole possession of 19th for games played in franchise history.
• Clay Stevenson made 26 saves to earn his ninth win of the season and the 54th of his career, allowing him to Marc D'Amour for sole possession of 18th in goaltending wins in franchise history.

SHOTS: HER 31, CLE 28

GOALTENDING: HER - Clay Stevenson, 26-for-28; CLE - Ivan Fedotov, 28-for-31

POWER PLAY: HER - 0-for-2; CLE - 1-for-3

THEY SAID IT:

Bears head coach Derek King on countering Cleveland's speed:
"Well, that's how we have to play against a team like that. They're a smaller team, but they're fast and they've got a lot of skill. So if you give them room to skate and don't get in the way and slow them down, then they're gonna eat you up. And I thought we did a pretty good job of slowing them down."

King on how critical the penalty kill has been to Hershey's success:
"Well it's the work. They take pride in it. Sometimes I wish our power play would take the same pride the PK does - we've got to get that thing going. But no, I've liked our PK and especially the goalie. He's your best PK'er, and Clay was awesome tonight."

King on how the team prepares for Sunday's rematch:
"Well, it's more or less the same game plan. We've just got to avoid the turnovers in the neutral zone, because they feed off of that. Like I said, they're a smaller team, but they're fast and they're skilled. So we can't play into their hands. But we got to get pucks deep and we just got to bang bodies all day."

Grant Cruikshank on his shorthanded goal:
"We let in [the tying goal to make the score 2-2] a little bit earlier. So we knew that was going to be a big hill in the last five minutes, whatever it was there. So I got the win on the draw and then it felt like their centerman was sleeping, so we tried to kind of blow the zone, and luckily [Schueneman] heard me [calling for a pass] and lucky it went in from there."

Cruikshank on the team controlling the physicality in the game:
"I felt like the crowd was really into it. It felt like every hit we had, we could really feel the crowd in the building come alive. That definitely gave us some momentum, and I felt like it got a little squirrely there for a little, but I felt like we did a fairly good job of keeping our heads in it, playing hard between the whistles, and nothing really brutal came from it. We've got to make sure we toe that line and stay in it, everything legal, and it felt like we were physical and made some plays off that too."

(Answers edited for clarity)

The Bears continue the 2025-26 season, presented by Penn State Health, when they host the Cleveland Monsters on Sunday, Jan. 11, at 5 p.m. at GIANT Center for Autograph Night and David A. Smith Team Photo Night. The first 6,000 fans in attendance will receive a 2025-26 Bears team photo, courtesy of David A. Smith, and following the game, a 75-minute on-ice autograph session will take place. CLICK HERE to purchase tickets for this game.