How ironic it is to suggest that the 2007 Calder Cup Finals pit the farm clubs for the Caps and Canadiens with history being represented by Washington. Tonight at Giant Center the Hershey Bears, AHL members since 1938, will make their 20th appearance in the Calder Cup Finals, an American Hockey League Record, and face the Habs’-affiliated Hamilton Bulldogs, competing in just their 11th season in the ‘A.’ The Bears, the reigning Calder Cup champions, will try to become the first team to repeat since the 1991 Springfield Indians.
The Bears will seek to reverse an eye-opening trend carried off by Hamilton this spring: in all three of their playoff series the Bulldogs have bested higher-seeded teams. They have prevailed the past five weeks with crunch-time courage — Hamilton has won a lot of close hockey games this postseason — and stellar netminding from blue-chip prospect Carey Price.
In the American League’s Eastern Conference Finals, Hershey had little trouble besting Manchester’s Jason LaBarbera, voted the best goalie in the league this season. But Carey Price, youthful though he is (the 5th pick overall by Montreal in the 2005 Entry Draft), is no journeyman talent. This postseason he is 11-5 with a 2.13 goals-against and a .929 save percentage.
Hamilton likely will not overwhelm Hershey’s blueline with waves of offensive pressure. During the regular season, there wasn’t a single Bulldog ranked in the American League’s top 40 scorers (Duncan Milroy was 43rd, with 25 goals and 33 asists in 64 games). There is balance up front: four Bulldogs tallied 50-plus points (Milroy, Corey Locke, Mikhail Grabovski, and Andrei Kostitsyn).
And in the postseason, this modest offensive output has held true to form: a lot of Hamilton’s wins have been of the 3-2, 2-1, even 1-0 variety. Kyle Chipchura, another Habs’ first-rounder, leads Hamilton in scoring this postseason, but he ranks just 19th overall. Keep in mind that Hamilton has played 17 playoff games, three more than the Bears. The Bears, meanwhile, fairly litter the league’s list of top postseason scorers: Scott Barney is 3rd, Flash is 5th, Kyle Wilson is 8th. Mike Green is outscoring all of Hamilton’s skaters.
Caps’ fans will also recognize a familiar face from the 2005-06 NHL season in a Hamilton sweater tonight: Mathieu Biron. He had a very solid season for Hamilton, finishing 6th on the team in scoring.
This series will also feature two great opposing antagonists/yappers, Louis Robataille for Hershey and Maxim Lapierre for Hamilton. Here’s how the Hamilton Spectator describes Lapierre: “a great skater and forechecker who arrives in the other player’s face with unnerving velocity.” I think Louis, even in his certain limited minutes the next 10 or so days, has to be excited.
Hamilton Head Coach Don Lever is well aware not only of Lapierre’s limitations but of Bruce Boudreau’s preparation for him:
“[Lapierre] still has to focus on the fact that there is a puck on the ice. The verbal thing may work for the first game or so and throw somebody off but we’re dealing with champions who have been through it all.
Lever said the Bears will be ready for Lapierre’s yapping because he learned it from Peter Vandermeer, who was with the Dogs last year and is now in a Hershey uniform.”
In its notes on the series Thursday, the Hamilton Spectator also paid close attention to coaching ties:
“Chances are good the Bears will have an excellent scouting report on the Bulldogs. John Anderson, coach of the Chicago Wolves, the team Hamilton beat out in the Western Conference final, is one of Hershey coach Bruce Boudreau’s best friends.”
There’s another excellent scouting source for Boudreau: Caps’ goaltender Olie Kolzig, who’s mentored Price in Tri Cities as the team’s owner, and had hands-on instruction with him during the NHL lockout.
To prevail, Hershey will have to continue its gaudy success at getting ahead and playing with the lead, as falling behind a netminder of Price’s ability is never a wise idea. It must also continue to get balanced scoring, although it may be too much to expect Mike Green to continue his Paul Coffey-like production this postseason (Green is 12th in AHL postseason scoring.) In net, Freddie Cassivi is heating up and reminding Bears’ watchers of his unearthly performance last postseason. He needs another strong series, as Hamilton, while no offensive dynamo, nonetheless possesses skill up front and is further dangerous skating with three-straight-upset MoJo.
Prediction: more close hockey for Hamilton, but Bears in six.
More previews: Tim Leone in the Patriot News; Mike Vogel of the Caps; and “The AHL’s Answer to ‘Hockeytown”
2 Comments
I await hearing the post-mortem on game 1 tomorrow. Was it really as bad, for the Bears, as it sounded on the radio?
pucksandbooks was about to step into the post-game press conference when I spoke with him at about 10:15 pm.
Look for a knee-jerk style post on Saturday morning.
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