2005-06 Hershey Bears: 10 Years Later – Brooks Laich
Brooks Laich during game six of the 2006 Calder Cup Finals.
Before the 2006 Calder Cup Playoffs, Brooks Laich had a phone call with his dad. “We’re going to win the Calder Cup Championship,” he told his father. “How do you know that?” his dad responded. “You can’t run though our team four times. We are too big, too strong, too deep.”
Laich was right. That playoff run brought Hershey their first Calder Cup in nine seasons, sweeping the first two rounds of the playoffs before forcing a game seven with Portland, beating future NHL stars like Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry after an OT goal from Eric Fehr to go to the Calder Cup finals.
The group of guys Hershey had that season was like no other. “We had an amazing mix,” said Laich. “We had Boyd Kane was our captain, a solid veteran presence. We had Graham Mink, we had Kris Beech who had had a lot of success in the American League. We had Lawrence Nycholat on the back end with Mark Wotton. Freddie Cassivi in net for us.
“Then you sprinkle in the high end talent of the guys that were prospects for the Caps – Jakub Klepis, Eric Fehr, Tomas Fleischmann, Mike Green, myself – you just look in the locker room and go ‘Well, who’s going to beat us?’”
Brooks Laich’s headshot for the 2005-06 Hershey Bears season (theahl.com)
Laich only played seven games for Hershey to start the season, ten overall after a three game stint in December, before coming back to Chocolate Town for the playoff run. “When we didn’t make playoffs in Washington, I was able to come back down because I was still on my entry level (contract). You’re able to come down and you get a chance at a championship. I remember coming down and being in a morning skate one day and Bruce Boudreau was running a meeting and I was just looking around the room at stall after stall of the individuals we had in the room, this was before the playoffs start, and I’m thinking ‘There’s nobody that can run through this team four times.’ You can’t do it. We had everything; we had forwards, we had defense, we had depth, we had great goaltending, tremendous coaching. There was just no way we were going to be beat.”
One of the biggest characters of that season was head coach Bruce Boudreau, who struggled with the playoffs when he was head coach with the Manchester Monarchs after good regular season outings. “I remember being on the bench in the Norfolk series in the first round and (Bruce) would get a little frustrated and our bench, like Colin Forbes and myself, would just be like ‘Relax. We got it. Take a look at the names up and down this bench.’ Coaches give us a game plan and let us go. We’re kind of a self maintaining machine. We had so many veteran, good players that could keep the emotions in check and keep the balance on the team.”
After the game seven heroics from Fehr, Hershey moved on to the Milwaukee Admirals. After a tough fought series, the Bears took down the Admirals in six games, winning in Milwaukee and taking home the team’s ninth Calder Cup. “Winning was incredible. Two thoughts went through my brain as soon as we won. The first thought was ‘Who’s next?’ You win that round and you’re like who’s next? I loved our team so much I wanted to play someone else!
“My second thought, I really thought a lot about my family – my mom and dad. Even though it wasn’t a Stanley Cup, it still was a professional championship. I thought about my mom and dad a lot – how much they meant to me and how lucky I was to be in this position. And then after that just enjoying our night with our teammates and our coaches and enjoy the next couple of days. Really still, a real fun time.”
The now 32-year-old Laich has gone onto a great career in the NHL, spending the last nine years in Washington. He is the only member of the 2006 championship team that has spent his entire career with Washington after the departure of Mike Green to Detroit this summer.
Ten years after winning it all with Hershey, Laich looks to add one more championship to his resume: a Stanley Cup.