Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Options Author
Summer time celebrations have wrapped up. Coaching camp has completed. Preseason video games are executed. Championship rings have been handed out.
All that’s left for the Hershey Bears to do now’s to lift their Thirteenth Calder Cup championship banner. That occurs tonight at Large Middle. Then comes a protracted trek, one that may once more stretch greater than eight months if the Bears are to change into the primary crew in 63 years to win a 3rd consecutive Calder Cup.
The primary crew to face in the way in which of that quest would be the Cleveland Monsters, tonight’s opponent who put the Bears by a seven-game battle within the Japanese Convention Finals final June. The competition would be the Dwell on Social Saturday AHL Recreation of the Week, streaming free on FloHockey’s Fb, X and YouTube accounts.
It’s the primary of 72 regular-season video games for the Bears, who will probably be dealing with an array of opponents all bringing their finest to attempt to knock off the two-time defending champions.
Hershey will probably be well-supplied to tackle this season-long problem, nonetheless. Because the Bears return for his or her 87th season as members of the AHL, a lot of final season’s core has returned, together with the Hunter Shepard–Clay Stevenson goaltending tandem who mixed for 51 wins, a .925 save proportion and 12 shutouts to seize the Harry (Hap) Holmes Memorial Award because the league’s prime web pairing.
Defenseman Aaron Ness is one in all eight present Bears who have been a part of each the 2023 and 2024 championship rosters. Ness, who battled by accidents every of the final two postseasons, is aware of all in regards to the grind.
“For us now it’s simply getting again to doing issues the fitting means,” Ness outlined. “With the ability to depend on one another to play the system correctly. It’s labored for us.”
Again once more on the blue line are the likes of Ness, Hardy Häman Aktell, Logan Day, Vincent Iorio, Jake Massie and Chase Priskie. Becoming a member of that core are Ethan Bear, who has spent the final 5 seasons completely within the NHL, and Brad Hunt, a Thirteenth-year professional and three-time AHL All-Star.
The ahead ranks return Ethen Frank (29 targets), Pierrick Dubé (28 targets), and Alex Limoges (24 targets). Mike Sgarbossa is again after ending final season in Washington. Ivan Miroshnichenko, Riley Sutter and Mike Vecchione supply sturdy assist as properly. Luke Philp came to visit from the Rockford IceHogs, and Spencer Smallman, a Calder Cup winner with the Chicago Wolves in 2022, involves Hershey from Colorado.
“We’ve actually developed a household right here, a brotherhood,” Vecchione defined. “Nelly (head coach Todd Nelson) can actually convey collectively a bunch of strangers and make one thing out of that. All of it comes all the way down to that, guys coming collectively [for] a standard aim.”
Hunt is aware of what the Bears have constructed, and his historical past with Nelson was a think about bringing him to Chocolatetown. The 2 have been collectively a decade in the past in Oklahoma Metropolis and Edmonton, and the chance to reunite together with his former coach in Hershey proved irresistible as Hunt continued to pursue a championship after being a part of Stanley Cup runners-up with Nashville (2017) and Vegas (2018).
“If you’re that shut,” Hunt stated, “profitable turns into a lot part of your each day routine. You need extra of it. I’m so pleased to be right here. You discover out actually shortly how issues work round right here. There’s one thing particular about what they’ve constructed right here and the tradition.”
A number of of the function gamers who stepped up large for Hershey final postseason are again within the fold as properly. They know what the duty entails – and what it will imply. Matt Strome, whose time beyond regulation aim in Recreation 6 of the Finals towards Coachella Valley gained the Bears their newest title, needs to take the journey once more.
“We all know what the recipe is right here,” Strome stated, “and also you’ve simply obtained to execute it.”
On the American Hockey League beat for twenty years, TheAHL.com options author Patrick Williams additionally presently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is an everyday contributor on SiriusXM NHL Community Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his excellent protection of the league in 2016.
