Late Black Bears rally not enough to overcome Seals in home opener

It’s hard to bounce back from a six-goal deficit, but give the Black Bears credit — they gave it their best shot on Saturday night.

The Seals jumped out to the early lead to the dismay of the home crowd, but the Black Bears eventually rallied back in the fourth quarter to bring the game within one goal. The game ended with 29 goals in total, almost three times as many (11) as the team’s meeting last season.

Rob Hellyer — acquired via trade from the Seals in the offseason — scored a hat trick in his Black Bears debut and added five assists. His eight points tied Seals forward Tre LeClaire for a game high.

“It’s always nice to put a few in, but at the end of the day, it’s more about that big number on the scoreboard, right?” said Hellyer after the game. “So yeah, it’s nice to help the team out, but a few more wouldn’t hurt.”

Reilly O’Connor scored twice and added four assists, while Connor Kearnan scored twice — including an incredible no-look bounce shot as he was sliding backwards towards Seals goaltender Christopher Origlieri.

“Definitely some positives from the game, but at the end of the day, this team, we’re committed to winning, we want to win. We want to win, so it wasn’t good enough,” said O’Connor.

“There’s a lot of good that we showed,” said Dan MacRae, behind the bench for the first time as a head coach in his career.

“A lot of character of coming back from the six-goal deficit, which is pretty near impossible in this league. Got to be proud of some of those individual efforts, but yeah, extremely frustrated by the start.”

Hellyer adjusted seamlessly to his new teammates as the game went on despite the slow start. “There’s resiliency there for sure, obviously the adversity came, so that’s always a good sign,” the right-shot said of his new team.

“But yeah, you’ve got to figure out how to win those games. That’s a very winnable game, and we’re within one, and we’ve just got to make a play, got to make a stop, we need a goal from somebody at that point, right… you know, figuring out how to step on the throat, so to speak.”