ROCHESTER, N.Y. – The two oldest teams in the AHL faced off Friday night at Blue Cross Arena. The defending Calder Cup Champions, Hershey Bears gave the Rochester Americans a highly competitive match and won the game 4-3 in overtime.
Alex Limoges scored the first goal of the game for the Bears. Kale Clague responded for the Amerks later in the period. In rare fashion, goalie Devon Levi collected an assist on the Clague goal. Less than a minute before the first period ended, Chase Priske scored for the Bears.
The second period gave way to little action – no goals were scored, and only one penalty was given up by the Bears.
A couple minutes into the third, Hershey took a minor penalty for batting the puck with his hand on the faceoff. On the same play, Lukas Rousek received a 10 minute misconduct for abuse of officials. Shortly after that the Bears took another penalty and Brett Murray scored on the power play for the Amerks. Later in the period, Clague scored his second of the night, giving the Amerks the lead. Josh Dunne took an untimely penalty for the Amerks with about 30 seconds left in play. Mike Vecchione capitalized on the power play with only seconds left in the game.
Vecchione put the team on his back in overtime and scored the game winner.
Hunter Shepard stopped 23 of 26 goals faced for the Bears, and Levi stopped 24 of 28 shots faced.
Check out this photo gallery from Inside The Rink’s Photographer, Brett Ballachino, for highlights from the game.
