By Don Scott

For only the third time 11 games this season, Hershey scored first to take an early lead, then went on to score a 5-3 victory over the Providence Bruins on Saturday night at Giant Center. Bear Bobby Nardella fed Erik Burgdoerfer, who fired a shot past Providence goaltender Kyle Keyser at 6:04 of the opening period.

Eight minutes later, Martin Fehervary made it 2-0 with his second goal of the season finishing off a Mike Sgarbossa pass. The period finished in a 2-2 deadlock when the Bruins responded on goals by Brendan Woods at 15:21 and Paul Carey beating Vitek Vanecek at 17:39.

The Bears claimed a 3-2 lead on their league-leading fourth shorthanded goal of the season, when Jonsson-Fjallby sent a pass across the ice to Shane Gersich for his first goal of the season. Jakub Zboril pulled the Bruins into a 3-3 tie at 16:59 that set up an exciting third period when the Bears scored twice in just 17 seconds.

At 3:15 of the final period, Brian Pinho scored his second goal of the year, and second game-winner of the season, roofing a shot from the right wing. Garrett Pilon followed 17 seconds later with his first goal of the season blasting a one-timer into the cage, following a feed from Christian Djoos.

“Bobby Nardella made a good strong play to get the puck out and I was able to take it to the net,” Pinho said about his game-winner. “I was looking backdoor and then just kind of tried to catch the goalie cheating a little bit, then Pilon scored and that was really big for us.”

“That Friday loss was definitely in our minds so we wanted to respond tonight and I thought we did a good job of doing that,” continued Pinho. “We had a really good start tonight which was something we’ve been struggling with a bit. Another big thing was our penalty killers did a good job of shutting them down on all of their power plays.”

Hershey’s victory improved the club’s record to 5-4-1-1 through 11 games. The Bears return to action and conclude their three-games-in-three-nights stretch Sunday evening against the Syracuse Crunch at 5 PM at Giant Center.