Yesterday’s AHL Clear Day deadline has come and gone. From now til the end of the season, these will be the players in the Bears lineup. Exceptions of course for call-ups and injuries. Take a look at who made the list after the jump.
Photo by Kyle Mace
Today is the day we find out who will be on the roster for the remainder of the season. For those of you unfamiliar with AHL Clear Day, here is the explanation directly from the AHL.
Only those players listed on a team’s Clear Day roster are eligible to compete in the remainder of the AHL regular season and in the 2012 Calder Cup Playoffs, unless emergency conditions arise as a result of recall, injury or suspension.
Teams may also add signed junior players or players on amateur tryout contracts after Clear Day, but only once their respective junior or college seasons are complete.
Those listed in the 22 available spots are the ones that will be able to play. If there is an injury or one of the players on the roster is called up to Washington, that spot will be filled in by a non-roster player. Those players are traditionally called the “Black Aces”. They stay in Hershey and practice with the team.
So who makes the cut?
Chris Bourque celebrates with Ryan Potulny after #22 scored the game winner for Hershey in overtime (All photos by Kyle Mace)
22. Ryan Potulny’s number. Also the number of seconds into over time he scored his 22nd goal of the season. That was also the game winning goal, giving Hershey a 2-1 win over the Springfield Falcons.
Kyle Greentree celebrates his goal tonight with his teammates (All photos by Kyle Mace)
The Bears have gone 1-6 in their last seven games, which is not good. Not good at all. But the Bears got that first win in five games with a big win with a 3-0 shutout over the Binghamton Senators.
Dany Sabourin watches a loose puck roll into the goal.
In the final game of this road stretch, the Bears had to take on the Lake Erie Monsters. After the excitement of their last meeting, it was easy to get excited for this game.
For the third game in a row, the Bears were the first team on the board. Julien Brouillette passed to Ryan Potulny, who one-timed the puck past Cedrick Desjardins. The Monsters weren’t too happy about this goal because Andrew Carroll fell into Desjardins during the play. But the goal counted and remained the only goal of the period.
Ryan Potulny acknowledges his #1 Star honors.
Fresh off of being on the wrong side of a shutout, the Bears seemed determined that tonight’s game against the Manchester Monarchs would not suffer the same fate.
Unfortunately, the Monarchs did take the lead just over a minute into the game. Justin Azevedo chipped a shot over Braden Holtby‘s glove hand on the first shot of the game.
Boyd Kane celebrates Jacob Micflikier’s second goal of the game (All photos by Kyle Mace)
After a tough loss last night, the Bears looked to re-bound and win their second straight at home against the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Pens for the first time since the 2009-10 season. Scoring five goals tonight, all the Bears needed was the help of Braden Holtby, which they got. Holtby only allowed one goal on 35 shots, helping the Bears to a 5-1 victory over the Pens.
Braden Holtby stops Bryan Lerg in the shootout (All photos by Kyle Mace)
The Hershey Bears came into tonight’s game facing a nine-game home losing streak to the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. Last night, Wilkes-Barre play-by-play announcer Tom Grace said of today’s game that the Baby Pens will win their tenth straight at Giant Center and start calling it the Penguins’ second home. After today’s game, Grace might need to rethink what he said. Hershey came back from a 3-2 deficit in the third to win the game 4-3 in a shootout.
Photo by Kyle Mace
Around 6:30 pm on Thursday night, Ryan Potulny tweeted Keith Aucoin “good luck buddy” and “you deserve it.” There was a bit of speculation on what was going on. Was Aucoin being called up? Or was Potulny just messing with the AHL leading scorer? If you guessed with that Aucoin was getting his first call-up to the big show this season, you guessed correctly.
Andrew Carroll waits in front of Dustin Tokarski for the puck. Photo by John Wright.
With one game left before the All-Star break, the Bears had one more chance to start their break by snapping their losing skid against the Norfolk Admirals.
Unlike last night, both teams scored power play goals to start the game off. Ryan Potulny scored the first goal of the game. The Admirals countered with a power play goal from Tyler Johnson a few minutes later. Tie game after one period.