Rapid Reaction: Second Period Spurt Dooms Bears in Loss to Thunderbirds

Jonny Brodzinski’s pair of goals in the first period had the Hershey Bears  in strong position after the opening 20 minutes of play, but a deviation from the group’s structure in the second proved to be its undoing on Friday, as the Bears surrendered three in roughly seven minutes en route to a 4-2 loss to the Springfield Thunderbirds.

After Otto Stenberg’s power-play goal at 5:07 got Springfield on the board, Oskar Sundqvist’s shorthanded goal at 7:24 knotted the score at 2-2 and tilted the ice in favor of the T-Birds.

“That shorthanded goal I think was the turning point right there. We get a power play, we’re expected to kind of gain some momentum off of that, and then they end up getting a shorthanded goal to tie it,” Brodzinski said. “I think that comes down to us – that we’ve got to be better on the power play.”

Riding that momentum, former Bear Calle Rosén netted the eventual game-winner for Springfield at 12:37 during a 4-on-4 sequence, and the Thunderbirds never looked back.

Still, Brodzinski said, there were some good indications from Hershey’s play.

“If anything, we’re gaining momentum into those next shifts, keeping them in their zone, just pounding pucks at their goalie and trying to generate offense,” Brodzinski reflected. “I thought there were moments where we played really well. There’s moments where there were some small little errors where we don’t get it clear, we turned the puck over and in certain situations that the puck gets out, it’s a totally different game. So some small little things that we need to clean up, and I think we’ll be all right.”

While Bears head coach Derek King like what he saw out of his club for most of the first and third, it was the team’s play in the second that raised some clear concerns.

“We’re not a team that’s built to take a period off, and we took the second period off,” King said. “We allowed them to get back in the game, and then we played to our identity in the third, and we were all over them.

“I think we were starting to get on our heels and we stopped skating and moving [after the shorthanded goal]. The third period we came out and we tilted the ice back in our favor. So if we play like we did in the third period, we give ourselves a chance to win.”

Although Springfield has had its struggles securing a win on home ice at MassMutual Center this season, King says Hershey cannot overlook its opponent for tomorrow.

“They’re a good hockey team – there’s a lot of good hockey teams in this league,” King said of the Thunderbirds. “But we can beat them – we just have to play three periods of solid hockey like we did in the third. If we do that, we give ourselves a good chance.”

The Bears have benefited from a largely healthy roster through the first dozen games of the season, and King has used that good fortune to rotate players in for maintenance as needed; the team brought the entirety of its active roster on the trip, and with a rematch looming against Springfield on Saturday, King expects to make some changes to the lineup.

“We’ll get some fresh bodies in for tomorrow, and we’ll see the status of some players,” King said. “Some are kind of banged up a little bit but there definitely will be some changes.”

Written by Bears media specialist Jesse Liebman