Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
Departing Hershey Bears head coach Todd Nelson made the most of his three seasons with the AHL’s senior-most franchise. Along with the pig roasts, team-bonding outings and memorable quips came a lot of wins.
Nelson, who led the Bears to back-to-back Calder Cup championships, left Hershey on June 20 to become an assistant coach with the Pittsburgh Penguins. After parts of 11 seasons as an AHL head coach in which his 450 regular-season wins rank him fifth all-time, Nelson is going back to the NHL.
The 56-year-old Nelson, who had already won the Calder Cup three times – once each as a player, assistant coach and head coach – before coming to Hershey in 2022, departs the Bears with a stack of impressive achievements. He went 141-53-12-10 in 216 regular-season games, his .704 point percentage the best among any head coach in Hershey’s 88 seasons in the AHL.
The Bears won the 2023 Calder Cup in Nelson’s first season with the team, a wild, back-and-forth seven-game battle with the Coachella Valley Firebirds that went to a Game 7 overtime finish. As a follow-up, he took them to a 53-14-0-5 record in 2023-24 and won the Louis A.R. Pieri Memorial Award as the AHL’s most outstanding coach. The Bears again defeated Coachella Valley in the Calder Cup Finals, this time in six games. And while a bid fell short to become the first team to win three consecutive Calder Cup championships since 1962, the Bears still won the Atlantic Division regular-season title this past season. He represented the team twice at the AHL All-Star Classic as well.
With that kind of success came plenty of popularity and security with Hershey. He also had indicated his preference to be a head coach several times in the past. On the other hand, his work in Hershey attracted NHL interest. Then came a phone call from Pittsburgh.
“I was really torn about what to do,” Nelson acknowledged. “When Pittsburgh came calling, I just wanted to talk to them. I was very intrigued about what they had to say. I knew some people in management there, but I didn’t know (president of hockey operations and general manager) Kyle Dubas at all. I didn’t know (new head coach) Dan Muse, but every conversation I had, I started getting more intrigued. I like the direction that Kyle has for the Penguins, and I just started weighing things out, and I think it was just time for a new chapter. I talked to a lot of people about it. It was a tough decision,…
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