By Brian Smith
Philadelphia Phantoms Correspondent

The Philadelphia Phantoms coughed up an early goal and found themselves down 3-0 after 20 minutes to the visiting Hershey Bears, but still managed to pick up a point in a 4-3 shootout loss. With two table-setting assists, Marc Cavosie powered the Phantoms comeback.

Just 33 seconds into the affair, Jakub Klepis staked the Bears to a 1-0 lead. It was the quickest goal of the season allowed by the Phantoms. Six minutes and one second later, Klepis had the only assist on Colin Forbes goal.

Tomas Fleischmann dashed the distance from the Phantoms blueline shorthanded for the 3-0 advantage to finish off a period that featured five separate fights.

The Phantoms came to life offensively in the second with goals from Ryan Ready and David Printz. The Ready goal triggered an avalanche of teddy bears from the 8,244 on hand at the Wachovia Spectrum. That night's promotion called for the fans to bring plush toys, which were tossed after the Phantoms first goal and will now be distributed to local children's charities. The stick-side wrister was Ready's fifth of the season.

Printz, meanwhile, finished a 3-2 shorthanded rush at 11:52 to prune the Hershey lead to one. Once in the Bears zone, Cavosie dropped a perfect pass to the trailing defenseman. Printz then closed into the slot and blasted his career high fourth of the season.

The lone third period marker was put into motion with a heavy hit from Josh Gratton. The rugged winger crashed the end boards and forced the puck up to wall in the Hershey side of the building to Cavosie. He, in turn, did not hesitate to center the puck to Stefan Ruzicka who flushed the puck under the pads of Frederic Cassivi from the top of the crease.

After overtime failed to settle the game, the shootout did. Ruzicka bagged the Phantoms only shootout marker, while Jamie Storr allowed three goals on four Hershey attempts.

"We allowed them to come out and dictate everything," remarked Phantoms Head Coach John Stevens. "It's great that we had the resolve to fight back and get the point, but I don't know why we keep putting ourselves in that situation, not ready to start the hockey game, because clearly we weren't."

The Phantoms take their 18-24-1-5 record and 42 points to Hershey for the back end of a home-and-home with the Bears, who stand in second place in the East Division with 67 points.