Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
Here is what you need to know as the American Hockey League gets set for opening night.
GOING FOR THREE
The Hershey Bears have a chance to make even more history this season.
Coming off back-to-back championships, the Bears can become the first team to win the Calder Cup three consecutive times since the Springfield Indians did so in 1960, 1961 and 1962. It’s been 109 days since Matt Strome’s overtime winner against Coachella Valley in Game 6 of the Finals at Giant Center delivered Hershey its 13th title.
Logan Day, Ethen Frank, Vincent Iorio, Jake Massie, Aaron Ness, Hunter Shepard, Riley Sutter and Mike Vecchione were all part of the Bears’ back-to-back titles, and all are on Hershey’s roster to begin the 2024-25 season. Dylan McIlrath, who captained the Bears to both championships, won a job with the Washington Capitals out of training camp. Meanwhile Mike Sgarbossa, who was injured for much of the 2023 postseason and in Washington for the 2024 run, is back with the Bears.
Head coach Todd Nelson, who has won five Calder Cups in his career as a player (1994), an assistant coach (2008) and head coach (2017, 2023, 2024), will again lead the Bears, who are the first team to be in position for a championship three-peat since 2010-11, when Hershey again was coming off a pair of Calder Cup victories. Rochester (1965, 1966), Nova Scotia (1976, 1977), Maine (1978, 1979) and Springfield (1990, 1991) have also fallen short of a third straight Cup since the Indians’ run in the early 1960’s.
The Bears begin their 87th AHL season Saturday night at home against the Cleveland Monsters, the team that they ousted in a seven-game battle in the Eastern Conference Finals in June. That game will be the Live on Social Saturday AHL Game of the Week, streaming free on FloHockey’s Facebook, X and YouTube accounts.
WOLVES, HURRICANES TOGETHER AGAIN
After one season apart, the Carolina Hurricanes and Chicago Wolves are back together. The teams announced a new three-year affiliation this past May, meaning that all 32 NHL teams again have a sole AHL affiliate.
Last season the Wolves were unaffiliated, the first AHL team to do so since the 1994-95 Worcester IceCats, while the Hurricanes scattered their top prospects across several AHL teams. In their first stint together (2020-23), the Wolves went 106-54-11-10 (.644) – the best three-year record in the league over that span – and won the Calder Cup in 2022. Seth…
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