HAMILTON, Ont. (caldercup.com) ... Another workmanlike effort has the Hamilton Bulldogs one win away from their first championship following a 6-2 win over the Hershey Bears in Game 4 of the 2007 Calder Cup Finals before 8,004 fans at Copps Coliseum on Wednesday night.
The teams go right back at it on Thursday night with Game 5 in Hamilton, as the Bulldogs look to become the first Canadian team to win the AHL title since 2001.
Duncan Milroy (1g, 2a) and
Andre Benoit (3a) registered three points each and
Mikhail Grabovski,
Matt D’Agostini and
Eric Manlow each had a goal and an assist for the Bulldogs, while
Carey Price (14-6) stopped 33 of 35 Bears shots.
Grabovski opened the scoring 2:07 into the game with his fourth goal of the postseason and his third in the last five contests, picking up a loose puck at the top of the crease and shoveling it past
Frederic Cassivi. Hamilton has scored the first goal in all four games of the series.
D’Agostini redirected home Benoit’s centering pass on a power play at the 10:19 mark to make it 2-0. The Bulldogs are now 7-for-26 on the power play (26.9 percent) in the series.
Hamilton opened up a 4-0 cushion before
Jakub Klepis and
Tomas Fleischmann scored third-period goals for the Bears. Milroy and
Ajay Baines added shorthanded goals in the game’s final minute for Hamilton.
NOTES: Hamilton had lost five consecutive Game 4’s before Wednesday’s victory... The Bulldogs’
Carey Price has a .950 save percentage in the series; counterpart
Frederic Cassivi’s is .842... Hershey had not lost back-to-back games since Apr. 1-4... Three teams have rallied from 3-1 down to win a Calder Cup Finals series, but none since the 1949 Providence Reds came back on Hershey.
