Hershey Bears – Providence Bruins Series Preview

bears-bruins-1
Photo by Tim Stough

The Calder Cup Playoffs are finally here and the Hershey Bears Hockey Club for the eighth consecutive year will participate in the postseason dance. Beginning on April 26th, the Bears will kick off the 2013 Calder Cup Playoffs with a first round, best of five series in Providence, Rhode Island.

Providence finished with the top record in the American Hockey League, capped a 50 win season and ended the campaign on nine game winning streak. Since hosting the annual AHL All-Star Classic in late January, the entire Bruins roster soon became stars of the league.

Read More

Graham Mink Returns to Chocolate Town

mink-1
HERSHEY, PA – Graham Mink skates during his return to Hershey on Saturday night (Tim Stough – Sweetest Hockey on Earth)

At the age of 33, former Hershey Bears star Graham Mink was hoping he wasn’t done with hockey. The NHL lockout kept him out of a job until January. Now he’s in a spot to perhaps win another Calder Cup.

Mink signed with the Providence Bruins, one of the best teams in the AHL. Last Saturday Mink returned to Giant Center to play his old team. Even though he’s returned with an opposing team before, it’s always a treat to return to Chocolate Town.

Read More

Hershey Bounces Back with win Over Bruins

hersheybears-pbruins-1
HERSHEY, PA – Ryan Potulny shoots his game winning goal during Hershey’s 3-2 come back victory over Providence (Tim Stough – Sweetest Hockey on Earth)

Nine games. That’s all that remains to decide the Hershey Bears playoff fate. Saturday night the Bears pulled off a come from behind victory over one of the best teams in the league, beating the Providence Bruins 3-2 at Giant Center. The victory keeps the Bears in the 8th and final playoff position, just two points ahead of Norfolk.

Read More

Snapshots: Week of 2/13/12


Welcome to the second week of Snapshots! This week I headed up to New England to check out the Bears face-off against the Providence Bruins and the Bridgeport Sound Tigers. Below the jump, I have photos from warm-ups and the game from the Providence game and warm-up photos from the Bridgeport game. And wait until the end for a two bonus photos!

Read More

Bears lose Battle of Bears, 6-0

Braden Holtby doing what most of us would probably want to do after a game like this. (Photos by Kyle Mace)

Woah woah woah. I know what you’re thinking, “Oh great, another loss. I don’t want to read this,” but if you wait until the end, there will be a photo of a cute bear. But this game was a lost, and it wasn’t pretty. Both Braden Holtby and Dany Sabourin gave up three goals in a 6-0 loss to the Providence Bruins.

Read More

Bears Snap Winless Skid, beat Providence Bruins, 4-3

Tenacity and determination lifted the Bears past Providence. Photo by Kyle Mace.

With each game, the Bears’ losing streak gets more and more disheartening. Tonight was a chance to turn things around and play a full game against the Providence Bruins.

The Bears tend to have strong starts and tonight was no exception. Just 18 seconds after puck drop, the first line combined for the first goal of the night. Chris Bourque scored his tenth goal of the season from the right face-off circle past Anton Khudobin.

The Bruins tied it up halfway through the period. David Warsofsky beat Dany Sabourin, who appeared pretty frustrated with letting that one in. The Bears answered with a goal of their own. Brett Flemming scored with a quick goal off the face-off.

Read More

Bears Hold Off Bruins, DeMichiel gets 4-3 Win

First thing’s first: huge congratulations to Jared DeMichiel for earning his first AHL start and win tonight as the Bears battled the Providence Bruins! DeMichiel was fantastic, having to face a lot of shots early and then continuously seeing more shots than his opponent on the other side, Nolan Schaefer, did. By the end, DeMichiel stopped 28 of 31 shots!

But the Bears gave DeMichiel an early lead to work with. Boyd Kane, continuing his recent point streak, led the offensive attack and scored the first goal of the night. A couple of minutes later, Kyle Greentree reached the twenty goal mark and beat Schaefer.

A very scary moment came midway through the first period. At first it seemed harmless enough when Trevor Bruess and Antoine Roussel dropped the gloves. They both threw some punches and fell to the ice. And then Bruess did not get back up. Very quickly, trainer Dan Stuck ran to his side and the medical staff of the Providence arena came to help.

It was hard to tell what was hurt but Bruess did not move a lot. Eventually, they stabilized him on a stretcher and took him off the ice. The only good news was that Bruess did manage to give the crowd a little wave as they rolled him off. John Walton announced that the news is that Bruess has a “fairly significant lower body injury.” We wish all the best to Trevor and hope that he can be back on the ice soon.

Once the game started up again, the Bruins finally managed to get a puck past DeMichiel. Maxime Sauve was left all by himself right in front of the goal and he went low and cut Hershey’s lead in half.

During the second period, Kane regained the two-goal lead on his second goal of the night. The goal came from an absolutely perfect passing sequence from Keith Aucoin to Francois Bouchard to Kane. Just beautiful. The Bruins fought back to get the game within one goal again. I’m willing to bet no one had Brian McGrattan down as their guess for the goal scorer.

At the very end of the period, the Bears were on the penalty kill and Providence worked their way up ice for one last attempt for time ran out. In the neutral zone, the Bears fought for the puck and Aucoin got away with it with no Bruin to fight him. He sped down the ice and sniped it right past Schaefer to give the Bears a 4-2 lead.

There was only one scoring change in the third period when the Bruins scored on the power play. Things got interesting in the last two minutes when Providence pulled their goaltender and Greentree was whistled for a delay of game. Thankfully, the Bears and DeMichiel stopped any last shots and the Bears won 4-3!

Read More

Bears continue losing skid after 2-1 loss to P-Bruins


The Providence Bruins celebrate Kirk MacDonald’s goal. Photo by Kyle M.

As far as I’m concerned, tonight’s game against the Providence Bruins lasted twenty minutes.

The first two periods yielded zero goals. Despite power plays for both sides and a number of decent scoring chances, the score was still zero-zero after forty minutes. The goal post seemed to be the third goaltender on the ice tonight.

We did get a fight though! Joel Rechlicz took on Sean Zimmerman. It was Rechlicz’s second fight of season (the first gave him the terrifying double black eyes). There were some pretty good punches thrown and I’d give the win to Rechlicz, although Zimmerman got the take down.

The teams made up for the lack of scoring by getting three goals in about five minutes during the final period. The Bruins scored first on a shot that may have deflected off a Bear before flying past Braden Holtby. Quickly after, the Bruins got an insurance goal during a delayed penalty call against Hershey.

The only scoring highlight for Hershey came when Andrew Joudrey tipped a Zach Miskovic shot to beat Nolan Schaefer. Schaefer, for the record, was phenomenal tonight. He is a big reason for the 2-1 win for Providence

So the Bears have started a losing streak just like their big brothers, the Caps. Hopefully they’ll break out of it tomorrow against the Charlotte Checkers (yes, them again).

Read More
Back To Top
Search