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BEARS 4, PORTLAND 0
Harrisburg Patriot-News: Cassivi denies Portland ... again

Anytime you conjure memories of Gordon "Red" Henry while wearing a Hershey Bears uniform, you know you're doing good stuff.

That's exactly what goalie Frederic Cassivi did again last night at Giant Center with a bounce-back 4-0 shutout of the Portland Pirates in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals.

Cassivi made 38 saves to pitch his fourth shutout of the 2006 postseason, moving within one shutout of tying what is believed to be the club playoff record of five set by Bears great Henry in 1947. Team playoff records are incomplete before 1946.

Ack!

Cassivi was good early and often as he improved to 11-1 in the playoffs.
Hershey took a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series and can advance to its first Calder Cup finals since 1997 with a victory in Game 5 tomorrow at Portland.

"Yeah, he made some great saves and we had some good opportunities that we couldn't finish, so it goes both ways," Portland head coach Kevin Dineen said. "But, certainly, their goaltender has been the story of the series thus far."

The Pirates, riding the momentum of Saturday's 6-5 double-overtime victory, swarmed in the first half of the first period. At one point they had an 11-2 shot advantage, but they couldn't convert.

Echoing their Game 2 power-play frustration, the Pirates went 0-for-9 and failed to score on a lengthy 5-on-3 (1:37).

"Freddy and the PK were obviously the difference," Bears head coach Bruce Boudreau said. "They had 12 shots in the first 10 minutes of the game.

That's a pretty hard pace to keep up by any team. Once we weathered that storm, I thought, stay the course and if we could get that first goal we'd be in the game."

That first goal came midway through the second when Jakub Klepis followed his own rebound to give Hershey a 1-0 lead. Portland came within inches -- centimeters? -- of tying it late in the second.

With two minutes left, Cassivi made an initial save on a Pierre Parenteau left-circle shot. A rebound deflected off crashing Shane O'Brien, but Cassivi reached out a big Bear paw to smother the puck as it trickled toward the goal line.

With 67 seconds left, an Aaron Rome shot hit the right post.

"I think they tried the same thing [as Game 3], trying to take as many shots as they can and get tips and rebounds," Cassivi said. "When you try that, sometimes you get the bounces and sometimes you don't.

"I guess tonight I got more bounces. Last night, they got more bounces."
Hershey opened the scoring floodgates in the third with goals from Kris Beech (10:35), Dave Steckel (14:38) and Jonas Johansson (5-on-3 power play at 18:47) on goalie Nathan Marsters (27 saves).

Hershey was buoyed by Steckel's presence in the lineup and Lawrence Nycholat's return after missing the last five games due to injury. Steckel missed two-plus periods of Game 3 after getting hit on the leg by a puck, but he took overnight electric stimulation and ice to be ready for Game 4.
Having Steckel for the duration certainly helped on the penalty kill, which surrendered four power-play goals in Game 3.

"We definitely got our pride taken away from us," Steckel said. "It was important to us to get that back."

Winning 10 in a row at the start of the playoffs was swell. But the Bears showed themselves something by rebounding from their first playoff defeat.

"It's important how you react after a tough loss," Cassivi said. "We had a two-goal lead with five-six minutes left [in Game 3] and let it go and lost in double-overtime. Some teams don't bounce back from those things and we did. It's nice to see. We didn't know how we were going to be because it was our first loss of the playoffs. It was new territory there and we reacted very well."

NOTES:
Eric Fehr, who had one assist in the previous five games, was replaced in the lineup by Johansson, who made his Hershey playoff debut. ... The Game 4 win guarantees that Hershey will at least host Game 7 if it can't close out the series in the next two games at Portland. ... Zenon Konopka, Portland's leading scorer, again was on the ice for a late-third-period fight. This time he fought Louis Robitaille, who mimicked Konopka's Game 3 celebratory gesticulations after the bout. ... During one stretch, referee Gord Dwyer awarded Portland six straight power plays.