Perets Spectacular in Shutout Win

Boulton Scores First in 2-0 Victory

April 18, 2026

Charlotte, NC – Yaniv Perets was incredible in just his fourth game of the season with the Phantoms. He knocked aside or absorbed everything the Charlotte Checkers threw at him in a 2-0 victory on Saturday afternoon in the second-to-last game of the regular season.

Perets was playing in just his fourth game with Lehigh Valley this season but had racked up 25 wins in the ECHL with Reading where he had been named the ECHL Goaltender of the Week two times in the past three weeks. Officially, the shutout goes down as a 39-save effort. But, realtically, Perets had at least 45 saves in the game and probably closer to 50. Technical issues in the building caused outages with the internet as well as the in-house video perhaps also affecting the official count.

He was THAT good. In just his eighth career AHL game, Perets has his first blank sheet. And the Phantoms needed every single one of the those saves…no matter how many of them there were. Lehigh Valley was outshot 39-15 in the game (officially) including 14-2 in the third period.

Charlotte’s leading scorer, Ben Steeves, had a breakaway in the second period and, by that time, everyone had already seen that Perets was not going to easily be beaten in this one. Sliding across to deny Trevor Carrick on a one-timer multiple times and stuffing multiple odd-man rushes and point-blank rebound tries was par for the course for Perets who made his first career AHL shutout one to remember.

Sawyer Boulton broke a scoreless tie in the second period with a rifle from the slot that beat Cooper Black five-hole off a nice handoff from Christian Kyrou. That was it for the Orange and Black until Jackson Edward’s long empty-netter for his first of the season capped the evening.

Lehigh Valley (31-34-6) recorded its first win of the season against the Charlotte Checkers,

The Phantoms and Checkers conclude the regular season on Sunday at 1:00 p.m.

Final AWAY