The Phantoms closed out their first three-in-three weekend of the season yesterday in Hershey, and were looking to exact a bit of revenge after a gutting regulation loss in Saturday’s meeting. And it was a rematch that was going well enough for them, for a time, anyway — after a tightly played first period, the Phantoms were able to finally break through early in the second, grabbing the lead and doing some nice work to hold onto it, at least until things started to go sideways on them, and an unlucky bounce helped the Bears draw even late in the third period, and then a breakdown in coverage opened up space for them to pick up the game winner in overtime to sweep the weekend series.
The standings point they collected by getting themselves to overtime this time around, though, did allow them to reclaim that third position in the division standings back from the Bears, so there’s one small moral victory, if that’s left as a consideration.
Kolosov recovers
Despite the suboptimal outcome, this game certainly wasn’t without its positives, and Kolosov’s performance is at the top of the list. Coming on the heels of a less tidy showing on Friday against Springfield — lost in the shuffle of the Phantoms putting up a whopping seven goals in that game was the fact that Kolosov looked a little more shaky, backsliding into those old struggles in tracking shots through traffic, and allowing three goals on just 20 shots against — Kolosov was able to even out his play nicely in his next start, closing out the three-in-three in Hershey. This workload was quite a bit more difficult, both compared to what he faced against the Thunderbirds and what the Phantoms allowed from the Bears in the evening before, but he handled it quite well, stopping 35 of the 37 shots that were thrown at him (20 from the home plate area, making things even more difficult), and overall looking more dialed in on his tracking of shots throughout the whole of the afternoon along the way.
The two goals that he did let in were real heartbreakers, but not for the fact that he stumbled when the team really needed him to come up with a save, but because they were both plays where he didn’t really stand a chance — the first goal came off of a puck from a point shot that missed, bouncing off the end boards and up to a Bears player next to the net, which he shoveled laterally in what looked more like a cross-crease pass attempt, but ended up deflecting in off of Helge Grans’s skate, and the second saw him come up with a huge save on a breakaway in overtime, only to have the rebound sent behind the net, all three of the Phantoms skaters chasing it back there and, realizing too late, Carl Grundstrom had gotten pinned too deep and abandoned his assigned player in front of the net, and it was an easy quick-up pass for him to cash in on. It was two real instances of bad luck for Kolosov, but they don’t erase the strong work he otherwise did to both stabilize his play and also keep the Phantoms in this game. He’s still working on his consistency of play at this level, but this will be a really positive showing for him to next build off of.
Gendron stays hot
This game was the lowest scoring of the three on the schedule for this week, but the Phantoms did get another nice contribution from Alexis Gendron for their lone goal scored on the afternoon, beating the Bears goaltender cleanly on a shot from some distance inside the right circle on a cycle play (and offering a nice bit of variety, as his last two goals were scored on breakaways).
That’s how it’s done!#LVvsHER | #LVPhantoms pic.twitter.com/81uTbVOzHR
— Lehigh Valley Phantoms (@LVPhantoms) November 16, 2025
And despite a little less consistent start to the season, Gendron’s managed to get himself on a four-game points streak, bringing him more or less on track to hit the 20-goal mark again this season (assuming he’s able to stay healthy, and his usage remains about the same), which is certainly an encouraging sign for a more under the radar prospect who’s trying to make an impression on the Flyers management group. He’s still a ways from making himself into a legitimate NHL option, but if he can keep up this work and carve out a role as a consistent top contributor at the AHL level, there may well be some doors opening up to him down the road.
Incremental improvement
The first meeting between these two teams on the Phantoms’ home ice on Saturday was a strange one, in that the Phantoms were able to comfortably come out of that one with the edge in chances created (putting up a whopping 41 shots on goal while holding the Bears to just 20 of their own), but had a few turnovers and soft plays on defense blow up on them spectacularly and end up in the back of their own net. It was a wakeup call, to be sure, that the Phantoms were just going to have to bring that much higher of a compete level and an attention to detail in the rematch to close out the weekend.
And the Phantoms, to their credit, did manage to nicely tamp down on the number of needless mistakes, the only trouble is that the biggest one they made on the afternoon came at the worst possible time. All the same, while this game did see a positive bit of progress made from what the team was able to deliver on Saturday, it still serves as a reminder of the progress they still have to make, and the high level of focus that they have to maintain in order to close out these games against an opponent like Hershey. After all, head coach John Snowden emphasized postgame on Saturday that Hershey is a team that is just never going to go away, is going to feast on every mistake that they make, and they did that yesterday, even as fewer mistakes were made. It’s still relatively early in the season, still relatively early in the process of refining their game plan and approach, but these two losses will be ones for the Phantoms to carry with them, fodder for
