Bears’ title defense begins with many familiar faces on board | TheAHL.com

Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer

Summer celebrations have wrapped up. Training camp has finished. Preseason games are done. Championship rings have been handed out.

All that’s left for the Hershey Bears to do now is to raise their 13th Calder Cup championship banner. That happens tonight at Giant Center. Then comes a long trek, one that will again stretch more than eight months if the Bears are to become the first team in 63 years to win a third consecutive Calder Cup.

The first team to stand in the way of that quest will be the Cleveland Monsters, tonight’s opponent who put the Bears through a seven-game fight in the Eastern Conference Finals last June. The contest will be the Live on Social Saturday AHL Game of the Week, streaming free on FloHockey’s Facebook, X and YouTube accounts.

It’s the first of 72 regular-season games for the Bears, who will be facing an array of opponents all bringing their best to try to knock off the two-time defending champions.

Hershey will be well-supplied to take on this season-long challenge, however. As the Bears return for their 87th season as members of the AHL, much of last season’s core has returned, including the Hunter Shepard–Clay Stevenson goaltending tandem who combined for 51 wins, a .925 save percentage and 12 shutouts to capture the Harry (Hap) Holmes Memorial Award as the league’s top net pairing.

Defenseman Aaron Ness is one of eight current Bears who were part of both the 2023 and 2024 championship rosters. Ness, who battled through injuries each of the last two postseasons, knows all about the grind.

“For us now it’s just getting back to doing things the right way,” Ness outlined. “Being able to rely on each other to play the system properly. It’s worked for us.”

Back again on the blue line are the likes of Ness, Hardy Häman Aktell, Logan Day, Vincent Iorio, Jake Massie and Chase Priskie. Joining that core are Ethan Bear, who has spent the last five seasons exclusively in the NHL, and Brad Hunt, a 13th-year pro and three-time AHL All-Star.

The forward ranks return Ethen Frank (29 goals), Pierrick Dubé (28 goals), and Alex Limoges (24 goals). Mike Sgarbossa is back after finishing last season in Washington. Ivan Miroshnichenko, Riley Sutter and Mike Vecchione offer robust help as well. Luke Philp came over from the Rockford IceHogs, and Spencer Smallman, a Calder Cup winner with the Chicago Wolves in 2022, comes to Hershey from Colorado.

“We’ve really developed a family here, a brotherhood,” Vecchione explained. “Nelly (head coach Todd Nelson) can really bring together a bunch of strangers and make something out of that. It all comes down to that, guys coming together [for] a common goal.”

Hunt knows what the Bears have built, and his history with Nelson was a factor in bringing him to Chocolatetown. The two were together a decade ago in Oklahoma City and Edmonton, and the opportunity to reunite with his former coach in Hershey proved irresistible as Hunt continued to pursue a championship after being part of Stanley Cup runners-up with Nashville (2017) and Vegas (2018).

“When you’re that close,” Hunt said, “winning becomes so much a part of your daily routine. You want more of it. I’m so happy to be here. You find out really quickly how things work around here. There’s something special about what they’ve built here and the culture.”

Several of the role players who stepped up big for Hershey last postseason are back in the fold as well. They know what the task entails – and what it would mean. Matt Strome, whose overtime goal in Game 6 of the Finals against Coachella Valley won the Bears their latest title, wants to take the journey again.

“We know what the recipe is here,” Strome said, “and you’ve just got to execute it.”

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.