Bears Roar Their Way to 12th Calder Cup Title

Hershey Bears forward and alternate captain Mike Vecchione originated "The Roar" among his teammates and the team's fan base during the course of the 2022-23 season. Way back in the preseason, Vecchione emitted a roar after scoring a goal, and it caught on with fellow Bears and fans alike. Players would return to the bench for the fist-bump line after scoring, and they would unleash a bit of a roar to amuse and inspire their teammates. Fans at Giant Center would unleash roars of their own during the course of contests.

It's only fitting then that Vecchione saved the best and biggest roar for last, and for himself.

Shortly after 1:15 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday, June 22, Vecchione scored the final goal in the final game of North American pro hockey for this season, a Game 7 overtime strike at Acrisure Arena in Thousand Palms, Calif. Vecchione's goal against the Coachella Valley Firebirds resulted in a 3-2 victory, claiming the game, the series and the Calder Cup for the Bears, the 12th Cup championship in Hershey's storied eight-decade history in the American Hockey League.

And speaking of the storied history of the AHL, Vecchione became just the second player ever - and first in just over 70 years - to end a Calder Cup Final series with a Game 7 overtime game-winner, joining Cleveland Barons blueliner Bob Chrsytal, who scored his own Game 7 overtime series clincher on April 16, 1953 against Pittsburgh.

"There is really no feeling like it," said an elated Vecchione, minutes after his series-clinching goal. "We talk about this, as kids we dream about it. I grew up with my boys on Taylor Street, playing street hockey and we always dreamed about this stuff. It's a real dream come true for me."

Vecchione's dream goal came at 16:19 of the extra session, lifting the Bears to their first Calder Cup since 2010. This season marks Hershey's fourth Calder Cup title - and its sixth trip to the Final - since the Caps and Bears renewed their affiliation together in 2005.

In the wake of a disappointing season for the parent Capitals in 2022-23, Hershey's inspiring run to the Cup puts a punctuation mark on a campaign that began nine months ago at Caps' training camp. Lengthy Calder Cup playoff runs have been a critical part of the development of Washington's young prospects for nearly two decades now, and this year's run of nearly two months is an uplifting organizational development.

"I think it's a great experience for them," says Caps' assistant general manager Ross Mahoney, who drafted several of the newly crowned champions. "The further they go in the playoffs, the further I think it helps develop them for the following year. You know, we went through this with the Mike Greens and the [Karl] Alzners and the [John] Carlsons and those kind of guys, where we had a run there where we won three Cups in about six years. And for those guys to do it - and what did we have, seven or eight guys in the lineup [for Game 7] - [Aliaksei] Protas and [Connor] McMichael and [Beck] Malenstyn, [Lucas] Johansen, [Vincent] Iorio, [Hendrix] Lapierre, [Garrett] Pilon, [Riley] Sutter.

"I think it's great. Good for Hershey, good for our coaching staff down there and I think really good for our development team - Steve Richmond and Brooks [Orpik] and Jim Slater and Olie [Kolzig] there - they're obviously doing a fantastic job because of all those young guys that played big minutes and contributed."

Bears coach Todd Nelson was named to his current post less than a year ago, taking the reins as the team's head coach last August 11. Nelson and team captain Dylan McIlrath are the only two Bears who've won the Calder Cup previously; both won it with the Grand Rapids Griffins in 2017.

Hershey bounced Charlotte, Hartford and Rochester from the playoffs earlier in the spring to claim the Eastern Conference title. Facing the first-year Firebirds in the Final series, the Bears ran into the most formidable of its four postseason foes. Coachella Valley blanked the Bears in blowout fashion in each of the first two games of the series, putting the nascent squad in the driver's seat for the series.

But the Bears have been resilient all spring and all season, and they bounced back when it mattered most. Hershey eked out a trio of one-goal victories at home in Games 3-5, taking two of those wins in overtime.

Those three victories had the Bears holding a 3-2 series lead when they went back out west for Game 6 earlier in the week. McMichael staked Hershey to an early 1-0 lead in Game 6, but Coachella Valley evened the series with yet another multi-goal triumph, winning 5-2 to force a decisive Game 7 on Wednesday night.

Heading into Game 7, the home team had won each of the previous six games of the series. Even worse for the Bears, they had been outscored by an aggregate total of 14-2 in the first three games at Acrisure Arena, and Hershey had held a lead for only 8 minutes and 37 seconds of the previous 180 minutes of hockey played in Coachella Valley.

Hershey fell down 2-0 in Game 7, yielding a goal in the first five minutes of the first period and another in the first half minute of the second. But Bears goalie Hunter Shepard shut the door the rest of the way, making his most important save on a breakaway in the second period while Hershey was on the power play. Soon after, McMichael scored a power-play goal to put the Bears on the board, converting a feed from Mason Morelli at the back door with 6:08 left in the second.

"Mo made a great play to me back door, and I had a wide-open net," recounted McMichael. "It wasn't anything special, but I was happy to provide that spark."

Minutes later, Lapierre tipped home an Iorio right point shot, beating Firebirds goalie Joey Daccord to knot the game at 2-2 at 17:09 of the second.

Although the Bears dominated the second half of the game, they couldn't muster the go-ahead goal in the third and had to survive a Coachella Valley power play early in overtime before Vecchione won it on a rebound from in tight during a goalmouth scramble.

Nelson joined Bun Cook and John Paddock as just the third coach ever to pilot a pair of teams to a Calder Cup championship. Nelson also won the Calder as a player with Portland in 1994 and as an assistant coach with Chicago in 2008.

"It's a great feeling," says Nelson. "It never gets old. We were down 2-0 in the game, and Hunter Shepard makes a great save on a breakaway. It could have blown the game wide open; it was probably the turning point. Our guys stuck with it, and that's a testament to the character of the guys in the room. This group is a brotherhood, they love each other, and they'll be brothers for life now."

Aside from the obvious joy and exuberance evident on the face of every player sporting the chocolate and white in the wake of Vecchione's game-winner, the themes of brotherhood and love that Nelson alluded to were frequent in the players' postgame comments as well.

"I can't even process it right now," said McIlrath. "I'm so happy for these guys. I'm so proud of them. They're brothers, they're family to me. Overtime winner in Game 7, you couldn't have drawn a better picture. It's amazing."

"It just gives me chills," says forward Sam Anas, who was on the losing side of the Calder Cup Final last season with Springfield. "This group right here, you can see the energy, the love for each other and I think that's why we did it. Obviously, there's X's and O's, but we just love each other so much. It's awesome."

Joe Snively led the Bears in playoff scoring with 15 points (two goals, 13 assists) in the 20 games; Coachella Valley had five players with higher point totals than Snively. McMichael was Hershey's leading goal scorer with six; the Firebirds had five players with six or more goals in the postseason and there were four players on teams eliminated in previous rounds that also had six or more goals.

Shepard was the clear standout for the Bears. He started all 20 games, finishing 18 of them, and losing consecutive contests only once throughout the entire run, when Hershey dropped the first two games of the Final series against the Firebirds. Shepard permitted two or fewer goals in 14 of his 20 games, finishing with a 14-6 record, three shutouts, a 2.27 GAA and a .914 save pct. Shepard's efforts earned him the Jack A. Butterfield Trophy as the most valuable player of the Calder Cup playoffs, a distinction none of his teammates would dispute.

"Sheppie was unreal; he stood on his head once again," said Iorio. "He is the MVP for a reason. We pride ourselves on our defense, and our [defense] corps has been fantastic. We got the job done, and that's all that really matters."

"I don't think it's sunk in yet," said Shepard. "It doesn't feel very real, just the fact that we were down 2-0 and things weren't really going our way. We stuck with it; it's what this team has done all year. It's just a great group of guys."

When Vecchione potted the game-winner, he did so in the midst of a swarm of players just outside the Coachella Valley crease, pouncing on a loose puck and punching it home before being swarmed and mobbed by his teammates in the postgame pandemonium. Bears blueliner Lucas Johansen has logged more than 200 games over six seasons with Hershey, and he was as happy and excited as anyone after, despite lacking one important piece of information.

When he spoke to Caps' radio voice John Walton on the ice minutes after the game, Johansen admitted he didn't know who netted the game-winning goal.

"Credit to them," began Johansen, referring to the Firebirds. "They're a hell of a team, and you've almost got to play a perfect game to beat them. In the second half of the game, we really turned it on, and you could feel it coming and it was unreal.

"I don't even know who scored [the game-winner] but it was unreal. I don't know who it was, but I'm going to find out and give him a big hug."

A big Bear hug. Punctuated with a hearty roar.