Win Streak Snapped for Bears in 5-3 Loss to Monsters

November 22, 2025

Ilya Protas had a three-point (1g, 2a) night, but the Hershey Bears (10-5-1-0) fell to the Cleveland Monsters (5-4-3-1) by a 5-3 score on Saturday night to come away with a split of their two-game series this week at Rocket Arena.

The defeat snapped several streaks for Hershey, as its five-game winning streak, its six-game road winning streak, and its nine-game win streak at Rocket Arena all came to an end with the loss.

BOX SCORE

NOTABLES:

• The Monsters took a 2-0 lead in the first period with a goal from Hudson Fasching and a power-play strike from Jordan Dumais. Hershey, meanwhile, was held to just two shots on goal and did not record its first shot until Ryan Chesley managed a shot at 12:34. Hershey's two shots in the frame matched a season-low for shot totals in a single period.
• Mikael Pyyhtiä extended Cleveland's lead to 3-0 at 2:37 of the middle stanza; after the Bears scored twice, Jack Williams scored at 10:24 to make it 4-2 in favor of the hosts.
• Ilya Protas collected three points in the second period, assisting on Ivan Miroshnichenko's goal at 5:48, scoring for the fifth straight game with his seventh of the season at 10:11, and generating a through-the-legs pass to Bogdan Trineyev's tally at 17:10. Protas has 10 points (5g, 5a) over the course of his goal-scoring streak.
• Cleveland's Luca Pinelli also had a three-point night, assisting on goals by Dumais and Pyyhtiä, before scoring a power-play goal at 7:55 of the third period to cap the scoring.

SHOTS: HER 25, CLE 28

GOALTENDING: HER - Garin Bjorklund, 23-for-28; CLE - Ivan Fedotov, 22-for-25

POWER PLAY: HER - 0-for-1; CLE - 2-for-5

THEY SAID IT:

Bears head coach Derek King on what led to tonight's loss:
"We got outworked there for half of the game and then I thought we tilted the ice in our favor, but we can't be taking penalties. We took penalties at bad times and you just can't do that. You're not going to win too many hockey games."

King on self-inflicted wounds such as penalties and the slow start:
"I call them unforced errors, like tennis, right? There's always so many unforced errors, until we stopped [committing] those errors - we got on a roll, we were putting pressure on them, we were banging bodies, we were controlling the game. And then you go take a stupid penalty, the puck goes in your net, and it just sucks the life out of you."

King on the play of Ilya Protas' line and Cleveland's goaltending tonight:
"He was good for us, obviously. I thought we couldn't score on the goalie - they couldn't score on our goalie in the first game, and this game, we just couldn't score. And he made an unbelievable save at the end there, two-pad stack, kicked his leg up and stopped it. But that line [of Protas, Miroshnichenko, and Trineyev] was good. They put some pressure, but I need four lines to go. And for the most part we had it, but there were times when we didn't."

The Bears continue the 2025-26 season, presented by Penn State Health, when they return home to host the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins for their traditional Thanksgiving Eve game on Wednesday, Nov. 26 at 7 p.m. at GIANT Center. All fans in attendance that night are welcome to participate in the postgame Canteen Vending Turkey Shoot on ice. CLICK HERE to purchase tickets for this game.