Bears facing early gauntlet in latest title defense | TheAHL.com

Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer

Providence. Springfield. Providence again.

That’s what the Hershey Bears are facing this weekend on their first extended road trip of the 2024-25 season. The swing through New England is one of just two three-in-three sets for the Bears, but will be an early test for a club that has played deep into June each of the last two years.

Hershey’s bid for a Calder Cup three-peat opened with five games in nine nights, including a two-game rematch against their Eastern Conference Finals foe from Cleveland and a two-game visit from Chicago. The Bears roster features 21 holdovers from last spring’s postseason run, a remarkable degree of stability. Head coach Todd Nelson, who possesses five Calder Cup rings, knows quite well that the process of re-engineering a championship-caliber group takes time.

“We’re trying to guard against [any hangover] this year,” Nelson said. “But we’ve played a lot of hockey the last couple of years. Not making excuses. We have to make sure that we’re ready. As a coaching staff we have to find ways to motivate, to make sure that they play 60 minutes.”

Even with a few early hurdles, this year’s group has earned Nelson’s faith. The busy home schedule out of the gates provided a chance to test his team. The Monsters look formidable again. The Wolves’ elite speed gave Hershey another metric by which to measure itself.

The most noticeable change to the Bears has been with their captaincy. Dylan McIlrath, who served as captain the last two seasons, appears to have secured a full-time role with the Washington Capitals. So this week Hershey appointed Aaron Ness as their new captain. The veteran of nearly 750 games is in his 13th AHL season and his seventh in Hershey, and garners ample respect in a dressing room already brimming with leadership.

Ness, who signed a contract extension to stay in Hershey through at least 2025-26, knows the organization’s standard quite well, and he was also previously a captain with Bridgeport in 2014-15. Part of the early work the Bears’ leadership group will be trying to navigate the team through the first third or so of this season. Any idea of a Calder Cup hangover never materialized last year, as the Bears won 18 of their first 22 games after their 2023 championship and rolled to the second-best regular season in AHL history.

“We just have to find ways,” said Nelson. “The players have to find a way to prepare themselves and motivate themselves, and as coaches we have to do the same. But it does have a bit of a different feel. I’ve been on teams that have been through this and didn’t start clicking until late November. But we’re going to have to find a way to get going quick here.”

The intense back-and-forth emotional pull of a Calder Cup run can be a stark contrast to the quieter, more subtle, day-to-day challenges that come with the regular season. The Bears also know that, once again, they are circled on every opponent’s schedule.

Said Nelson, “We’re going to see everyone’s best game, so we have to be prepared every night to play.”

On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.