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Gordon’s a favorite with the Pennsylvania hockey press corps that covers the Bears. A handful of them took turns assuring me how nice a kid he is and how much they enjoy working with him. One of them described Gordon as “the kind of kid you’d like to see your daughter marry.” He answers all post-game questions patiently and with deliberation and candor and even self-effacing humor. One reporter Saturday wanted to know if this turnaround in his season had caught Gordon blinking his eyes in disbelief.

“I tried to blink my eyes and think twice when I went down [to South Carolina], so there’s a lot of blinking going on,” he joked.

“It’s just another hockey game,” he added. I’ve been doing this since I was four years old.”

His Bears’ teammates passing the newcomer’s Hockey Night in Hershey media hubbub took turns poking fun at it all.

“Somebody’s going up to Washington,” Louis Robitaille needled as he passed. Chris Bourque offered a crack about the rookie getting a big head.

The post-game press pack that surrounded Gordon Saturday night might have been new to him, but I got the feeling his future was going to include more of them.

A sidebar to Saturday night’s breakout party for Gordon was Eric Fehr’s return to the team after being out nine months with a frustratingly slow-healing compressed nerve affecting his lower back and hip. He sat out the middle game of a three-game weekend, but he told me that his first two games had him feeling pretty good and strong.

“I didn’t want to rush back too quickly and play all three games this weekend. I gotta get back up to speed — when you’re tired, that’s when injuries happen,” he said.

Fehr’s injury was rare and laden with setbacks. I asked him if his physicians had said anything to him about a likelihood of recurrence, or if his treatment and rehab and the nature of the injury made it more likely that it was beaten back once and for all.

“From what I know I think it’s the kind of injury that’s very rare, you don’t see a lot, and from what the doctors say they think it won’t be coming back. It’s such a freak thing it’d be tough to come by it twice, I think.”

I also wanted to know what kind of goals Fehr might have after missing so much hockey, missing training camp and attempting to join a surging team smack in the middle of a season.

“For the next couple of games I think it’s just get up to speed, get back in shape and try to produce offense for this team, and after I start feeling better I’ll maybe re-evaluate and maybe set a goal for the rest of the season.”

I asked him if hockey in Washington this season was in his thoughts at all these days.

“In the back of your mind you wanna get into Washington — that’s the goal of every player that plays in the AHL is to get called up, and I’m no different. Right now though I just gotta focus on competing and playing at a high level in Hershey.”