Well, no one said winning the Calder Cup was supposed to be easy.
After a 6-2 win in Game 3 that had Coachella Valley Firebirds fans visualizing a potential Calder Cup coronation on home ice on Saturday, those hopes were rudely dashed Thursday night. A championship-caliber opponent can do that to you.
The Hershey Bears played “on their toes” as their coach Todd Nelson said from the start of the game and pulled out a hard-fought 3-2 win over the Firebirds. It wasn’t the most painful 3-2 loss the Firebirds have suffered at the hands of the Bears at Acrisure Arena, but Thursday’s loss was a close second.
The series is now tied 2-2. Pivotal Game 5 is Saturday at Acrisure Arena, but the series will now definitely go at least six games, which means if the Firebirds are going to finish this postseason as champions, they will be hoisting the Calder Cup in Pennsylvania, not Palm Desert.
While that may be a bummer for desert fans, it’s certainly not a surprise. The notion that any team would beat a Hershey squad that had one of the best regular seasons in recent AHL history four out of five games was not realistic.
Coach Dan Bylsma has said all along that the Firebirds planned for 420 minutes of hockey in a playoff series, meaning seven full games.
“I think we all knew they were playing a good game. You gotta tip your cap to them at some point in time, you just can’t think you’re going to roll over them,” Bylsma said in praise of the Bears. “But I also thought we knew we weren’t doing the things necessary to impose our will on them.”
More: Hershey edges Firebirds in Game 4 Calder Cup Finals: Firebirds can’t match the energy inside Acrisure Arena in 3-2 loss to Bears
The Firebirds rely on confidence and swagger, and that gives them an edge over most teams. Hershey is not most teams. The Bears, thanks to that shiny Calder Cup they skated around Acrisure Arena with last year, can match the Firebirds in the confidence department.
But they have also proven in the past two years that they have that champion’s ability to erase a poor performance from the memory bank and move on to the next game. Who could forget the Firebirds winning Games 1 and 2 last year 5-0 and 4-0, only to see Hershey get off the mat like those two games never happened?
On Tuesday, the Bears looked outmatched by the speed of the Firebirds who peppered the net with shot after shot in a 6-2 win. On Thursday, everything was different. The Bears dictated the tempo. The Bears were winning the forecheck battles,…
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