What in the world has gotten into the Hershey Bears?

From The American Hockey League Playoffs Department:

Harrisburg Patriot-News: Hershey blasts to 9th straight win

PORTLAND, Maine - Lawrence Nycholat and Mark Wotton are extremely important players for the Hershey Bears, but the team keeps rolling in their absence.

Playing without the injured defensive duo for the second straight game, the Bears and goalie Frederic Cassivi opened the Eastern Conference finals with a 5-0 shutout victory over the Portland Pirates last night at Cumberland County Civic Center.

Team playoff records are incomplete, stopping before 1945. According to the available records, the Game 1 shutout over Portland and the Game 4 shutout of Wilkes-Barre/Scranton marks the first time since 1947 the Bears have posted consecutive playoff shutouts.

Cassivi has stopped 101 of 102 shots in the last four games and recorded three shutouts for a team that is 9-0 in the playoffs.

The Bears have allowed just one goal -- and no even-strength goals -- in the last four games.

"It's probably the game I'm most tired since the beginning [of the playoffs]," Cassivi said. "They had a lot of traffic. Whenever the puck was thrown at me, there was always one or two guys driving the net. That makes it tough. They're a hard-working team and they're going to keep doing that."

The game was closer than the score indicates. The Pirates outshot the Bears 33-26 and sustained offensive zone pressure.

They couldn't put the puck in the net, suffering their first shutout of the playoffs. Meanwhile, Hershey rode Cassivi, two goals apiece from former Pirates Brooks Laich and Tomas Fleischmann, and an 8-for-8 penalty kill to a 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.

Kris Beech also scored a power-play goal for Hershey, which had an odd night with the extra man. Hershey's power play didn't function smoothly, gave up a number of short-handed chances to Portland -- and still finished 4-for-12 for its most productive game of a postseason in which it has scored at least one power-play goal in every game.

"They had more chances on the penalty kill, I think, than we had on the power play," Bears head coach Bruce Boudreau said.

Yet we scored four power-play goals. It was by no means a great effort on our part. We just got lucky with a couple of bounces and the right guys had the puck in the slot. You give Fleischmann and Laich those chances in the slot, those are two guys that are going to score."

Cassivi came up big in the initial 10 minutes of the first while the Bears shook off some rust. Laich opened the scoring 11:22 into the game with a power-play goal that marked the eighth time Hershey has scored first in nine games.

"I think it was a big goal for us," said Laich, who scored both his goals on the power play.

"We looked at their Game 1 in the last two series and they had blown the teams out. We kind of wanted to get that first one and take the crowd out of it."

Fleischmann's screened power-play goal on Jani Hurme made it 2-0 at 16:12 of the first, a lead that stood unchanged into the third. After Hurme, who wasn't sharp, surrendered third-period goals to Laich (2:19) and Fleischmann (6:11), he was replaced by Nathan Marsters.

"There was no rust in our goalie," Boudreau said. "I think we weathered the storm early. I thought we were outplayed pretty good in the first period. When you get outplayed pretty good and you get a 2-0 lead, you're pretty happy."

Defenseman Jeff State made his Hershey playoff debut, finished even, and stepped up to fight Nathan Saunders and Zenon Konopka during a third period that got chippy amid Portland's boiling frustration.

AHL playoff scoring leader Konopka was neutralized, mustering just two shots as his 24-game scoring streak ended. Boudreau said he was going to lobby the league office to hit Konopka with an instigator before fighting State with two seconds left, which would result in a Game 2 suspension if successful.

NOTES:
Former Pirate Louis Robitaille was doused with beer in the penalty box in the third. "Security did a good job," Robitaille said. "I think that's low class. I'm doing my job. They used to like me." ... Hershey had lost eight straight conference finals games. ... Portland winger Pierre Parenteau left in the third with an apparent shoulder injury. ... Cassivi stopped two short-handed breakaways by Geoff Peters. ... It may just be playoff subterfuge, but the Bears are hopeful about the chances of Nycholat and Wotton returning for Game 3. ... Game 2 is scheduled for tonight here.