The Cleveland Monsters beat the Lehigh Valley Phantoms 5-2 on Sunday afternoon at the PPL Center. With the win, the Monsters are now 3-1-0-0 and are currently in first place in the AHL’s North Division standings.

Lehigh Valley’s Jack Studnicka scored first at 1:15 of the first period to make it 1-0 Phantoms. Cleveland’s Guillaume Richard added a tally off assists from Max McCue and Josh Eernisse to lock the game 1-1 through 20 minutes. Alex Bump pulled the Phantoms up 2-1 at 5:24 of the second period, followed by Eernisse netting one for Cleveland at 16:17 off a feed from McCue to make it 2-2. Steven Lorentz added a marker at 19:57 of the stanza with assists from Mikael Pyyhtiä and Luca Pinelli to send Cleveland into the second break up 3-2. Pinelli found the net at 15:55 of the final frame with help from Corson Ceulemans to increase the Monsters’ lead to 4-2, leading to Pyyhtiä capturing the empty netter at 18:55 to seal a 5-2 win for Cleveland. 

Cleveland’s Evan Gardner made 24 saves for the win while Lehigh Valley’s Aleksei Kolosov made 33 saves in defeat. 

The Monsters will head home to take on the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins on Friday, October 16, at 7:00 p.m. at Rocket Arena. Follow the games with full coverage on SportsRadio 99.1 Powered by Rock Entertainment Group, AHLTV on FloHockey and the Monsters Hockey Network.

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Cleveland Record: 3-1-0-0

Lehigh Valley Record: 0-2-1-0