Best of hockey's little guys: The Hershey Bears

The Hershey Bears win the Calder Cup tonight, beating the Milwaukee Admirals 5-1.

Pretty impressive run: 4-0, 4-0, 4-3, 4-2. Goalie Frederic Cassivi is in goal every minute of the 21 games.

 

Re: Best of hockey's little guys

I thought this was on Martin St. Louis or Dino Ciccarelli

Speaking of the latter, anyone seen Rosie lately???

 

Re: Best of hockey's little guys

With any luck, Dino is suffering from a raging case of the herp.

 

Hey, good for Hershey, a classic small-town AHL franchise.

Actually, it's the longest continuously operating franchise in the entire league (dating back to 1938) and has won more Calder Cups than any other team, with nine.

Hershey is also where Don Cherry began his nomadic pro hockey career in 1954, and where he met his beloved and tolerant wife Rose.

 

Theo!

 

I'm happy for coach Bruce Boudreau and assistant Bob Woods, who were coach and player/assistant coach on the ECHL team I covered as my first beat. They won a championship that season, too. Great run with five overtime games, including a three-OT marathon in the first round and a third-period comeback, single-OT victory in Game 7 of the finals. Never heard a building so loud in my life, and it was at a hockey game in Mississippi. Go figure.

 

Bruce Boudreau strikes me as someone I'd like to have a beer or 12 with.

 

He was the Crash Davis of minor-league hockey. Highly productive minor-leaguer, he could never translate that success to the NHL with the Leafs. Great junior with the long-gone Toronto Marlboros too.

 

The Calder Cup playoffs are already over? Man, they just flew by.

 

It's easy to see why he could never stick with the Leafs. All he did was put the puck in the net. Why would the Leafs of the late '70s and early '80s have wanted a guy like that?

 

Ah, Gabby.