Bears Struggling to Succeed 

Thus far the Hershey Bears’ 2017-18 season can be summed up in three words, surging and struggling.

Training camp injuries to both last season’s number one and number two goalies, Pheonix Copley and Vitek Vanecek, both unforeseen when camp started, meant that bench boss Troy Mann’s charges, already thin in the defensive area, would be stretched even further without the services of that talented tandem for a few weeks.

“Everybody knows that Copley had a pretty significant injury in game four of the Providence series (an injury that shelved him for the remainder of the playoffs), but he came into training camp and everything was great, but unfortunately at the end of camp he tweaked that same injury. They wanted to make sure they got it right, there was no surgery involved in the summer, but we had to be very patient in order to get him back to 100%. As for Vitek, it was just a tough luck kind of injury. He pulled his hamstring in the first preseason game in Jersey and once I got back to Hershey, Dr. Black pretty much said hamstring injuries are a minimum of six weeks, and sure enough it was just over six weeks before he was healthy enough for us to send him down to South Carolina to get a couple of rehab starts in.”

With Parker Milner and rookie Adam Carlson trusted to “tend the twine”, backed up by the relatively inexperienced blueline bunch, the Bears struggled from the start, beginning with a sizable 7-2 road setback at the hands of the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, an encounter in which goaltender Milner was victimized for six goals. That was followed up by a pair of home ice losses, one in regulation and one in a shootout to the Phantoms, and just like that the Bears found themselves without a win in three ties to open their historic 80^th American Hockey League campaign.   

“First and foremost, I don’t know how many AHL or NHL teams for that matter could survive without their number one or number two goalies, so that certainly played a major factor.  We were hoping to have Copley and Vanecek to start the season, knowing that we were going in with three rookies on the blueline, and actually that turned into four when Madison Bowey only lasted one game (before being called up to the Washington Capitals due to an injury on the Caps’ defense) . That all combined to play a part in It”, said Mann, whose club was winless in their first four outings of the season.

Mann continued, “Adam Carlson was certainly a pleasant surprise in terms of the couple of starts that he got, but there were some inconsistencies in Parker Milner’s game, mixed that with seven or eight rookies on the roster, specifically on the back end, and we knew there were going to be some growing pains.”

Like many other AHL coaches, Mann has lamented over the years about the abundance of games his club has against division rivals, but he had to be happy when we peered closely into the Bears’ schedule when it was released this past summer. Sure, it was still dotted with frequent appearances against Keystone State neighbors the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins and Lehigh Valley Phantoms, but it also featured a three game early season Midwest road swing to Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, and Rockford, and the freedom of the road, although it only paid off with one win, in Grand Rapids, Mann says his club benefited in tangible ways from the experience.

“It was a very difficult road trip as it was basically three games in two and a half days with time changes and some tough travel. But we were able to get in there two days early, with the big amount of rookies on the team, and do some team bonding and get in some practices. I think that any time that you are able to do those things as a team, especially when you have a lot of new guys, it’s important. I still think that even though we only won one game on the trip, I think that trip played a big part in getting our guys together.”

After returning home from the Midwest trip, the Bears suffered another tough setback, on the road against the baby Pens. But, that was followed up by a pair of home ice wins, and the Bears’ fortunes appeared to be changing with the back-to-back wins, and the prospect of Copley returning to action in the next game, a road outing against the Rochester Americans.

In Rochester, the Bears bolted out to 3-0 lead, and Copley, who was perfect in the first period in his return to action, but in the middle stanza, he succumbed to six goals in a 19-shot barrage, and that left Mann with a bit of a dilemma.

“Anytime you have multiple pucks going in in one period, whether it’s to change the momentum or because of indifferent play it (pulling the goalie) always goes through your mind.  But he had missed some significant time, and hadn’t played a game in about five weeks, and I thought it was important that he fight through it, and he did (allowing no goals in the remainder of regulation and overtime).  I didn’t want to pull him and then have him travel five hours back to Hershey and start the next night.  My message to the team after the second period was that we could win the game 7-6, I just felt it was one of these games, and we were able to get two goals in the third before losing the shootout, which is pretty much a crapshoot.”

Mann added, “We also had a three-in-three that weekend, and we had a plan in place to get him in two games, and if not, we were actually going to play him one, and give Carlson and Vitek one as well.” 

Copley has followed up the rocky Rochester outing with three straight wins, allowing only a total four goals in the process.

Vanecek, on the other hand, had an easy night in his AHL season debut on November 12 against the baby Pens at Giant Center, easy at least in the fact that he only faced a total of twelve shots. But the rust in his armor from the injury showed, as he managed only eight saves in suffering a defeat that saw the Bears score just one goal in support of him.

The Bears offense is best characterized by the “surging and struggling” saying. Nearly half of the clubs 40 non-shootout goals this season (18, or 45%), have been scored on the power play, and when that extra man unit is surging and they strike at least once on the power play, they are 6-3-0-2 and score an average of 3.36 goals per game, but when they fail to strike with the extra man, they have yet to a win a game, going 0-4, and scoring only a total of four goals in those contests.

“It’s absolutely a concern”, said Mann, in response to whether his team’s reliance on the power play is worrisome. “Our skill set this year is certainly not as deep as in years past, especially when you compare it to two years ago when an influx of rookies came in like (Travis) Boyd and (Riley) Barber and those types of players turned pro. We’ve talked about it, and obviously we’d like to generate some more five-on-five goals, as it forces your special teams have to be good on a night-to-night basis, unlike last year when we could get by on nights when the power play wasn’t on.”

“If you look at the league numbers, we are in the top ten on both special teams units, and I think for us to continue to have success that’s going to have to continue. Last year I think we finished second in scoring in general, and that was also the case the year before, but I just don’t see our team, the way it’s currently constructed, I don’t see that continuing this year. Our scoring has been primarily coming from four of five guys, as evidenced by multiple forwards on the team with pretty low numbers, and that’s just the way it is right now, but it’s still early.”