All across the interwebs this morning, the word is that Texas would be wise to win this game and go up 3-1 on Hershey. The notion of a must win game when you're up 2-1 is kind of silly, but I think it's a good one in this spot. I'm no AHL expert, and I have now seen the Hershey Bears play a grand total of 3 games in my entire life, but after seeing what they can do when the bounces go their way I am fearful for Texas should they not win tonight.
They already did the seemingly impossible in taking not one, but two games in Hershey. Can they realistically expect to take any more? Monday's game three represented a gargantuan swing in momentum when you consider that, up 3-1 in the first period, I was starting to wonder if I'd even get to use my game 5 tickets. In the collapse, Andrew Hutchinson was injured and Aaron Gagnon was banged up a little bit too; two of Texas' very best players.
Defending Big D correspondent Stephen has an injury update at Hundred Degree Hockey.
The Patriot News says the "real" Hershey Bears showed up in Game 3.
Mike Heika has a number of resources and previews for tonight's pivotal game 4.
This Hershey fan blog is nervous at the prospect of Hershey returning to their usual line combinations. (They switched things up in game 3, leading to the turnaround.)
On Monday there was some of that good old hockey knee jerk reasoning that if things are going poorly, blame the goaltender!! Which of course we all know is silly. Up 2 games to 1, all indications are that Matt Climie is their man. One bad game isn't enough to throw a guy (Krahn) that is recovering from a concussion into the middle of a championship Final.
Coach Glen Gulutzan said after game three "This time of year, you can't change things drastically. We'd like to keep [scoring] low. We have to keep them under 3 goals." That's the key tonight.