2024-25 Season Ends for Bears in 6-3 Game 3 Loss to Checkers

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AHL Hershey Bears

2024-25 Season Ends for Bears in 6-3 Game 3 Loss to Checkers

May 21, 2025 - American Hockey League (AHL)
Hershey Bears News Release


(Hershey, PA) - The Hershey Bears (3-5) saw their bid for a third consecutive Calder Cup championship come to an end as the club fell 6-3 to the Charlotte Checkers (6-2) in Game 3 of the Atlantic Division Finals on Wednesday night at GIANT Center.

The series loss to the Checkers marked the end of a league-record nine consecutive playoff series won by the Bears: (2023, 4; 2024, 4; 2025, 1).

NOTABLES:

Bogdan Trineyev opened the scoring for Hershey late in the first period, as he netted his team-leading fifth of the postseason at 19:02 from Ivan Miroshnichenko and Jake Massie to give the hosts a 1-0 lead. Trineyev later assisted on Miroshnichenko's third-period goal to finish the postseason as Hershey's leading scorer with seven points (5g, 2a) in eight games.

Mike Vecchione scored his third of the playoffs at 2:05 of the second period from Garrett Roe and Chase Priskie to extend the lead for the Bears to 2-0.

Charlotte answered with goals from Brett Chorske at 3:50 and Michael Benning during a 4-on-4 sequence at 6:42 to tie the game at 2-2. John Leonard then scored at 11:14 to give the Checkers their first lead of the night.

Will Lockwood padded Charlotte's lead to 4-2 with a goal at 2:27 of the third, and Justin Sourdif banked a shot in off the right post at 4:53 to widen the lead for the visitors to 5-2.

Ivan Miroshnichenko ended Charlotte's scoring run with his third of the playoffs at 5:54 to close the gap to two goals, but Rasmus Asplund capped the

Hershey's 14 shots on goal in the first period represented its largest output for the opening frame during the 2025 postseason. In the second period, Hershey was outshot 20-2, representing the largest volume of shots against in a single period in the postseason and tying the season-high of the regular season.

SHOTS: HER 26, CLT 38

GOALTENDING: HER - Hunter Shepard, 32-for-37; CLT - Kaapo Kähkönen, 23-for-26

POWER PLAY: HER - 0-for-3; CLT - 0-for-4

THEY SAID IT:

Bears head coach Todd Nelson on what led to tonight's outcome:

"Everything you saw all year kind of came to a head today. It reared its ugly head. You know, we're going pretty good. We're up 2-0, once again we don't get the puck deep, we turn over the puck, we get stuck in our end, they score. I don't know what we were doing on the 4-on-4 goal against. Then another turnover, and all of a sudden now they're up 3-2. And then all of a sudden, puck goes off [Nicky Leivermann] over top of [Shepard's] head, who's played great the whole playoffs. And you know what? It was just one of those things where it's like, we're going to keep on trying to push, but things didn't work out our way. I give Charlotte a lot of credit. They're a hard team to play against. They pressure you all over the ice. But I felt that they executed their game plan better than we did. That's the bottom line."

Nelson on his message to the locker room after a league-record run of nine consecutive postseason series has come to an end:

"Well, I said I loved them and it was a hell of a ride to win nine series in a row. That's something else. It's tough. People have to understand, when you get [into] the playoffs, it's tough enough to win a series, tough enough to win one championship. When you win back-to-back, and then you have to come back the third year, and we still clawed our way into first place, but we knew it was a gauntlet getting through this division. I think the series was closer than a sweep, but it didn't work out our way. You have to give [Charlotte] credit."

Nelson on the quality of hockey the Bears faced in this series:

"That's probably the best hockey we faced. I think so. They play a good brand of hockey. They play just like their parent club. The pressure, and like I said, you've got to give them credit. The coaching staff did a great job and they were tough to play against, and like I said, they executed. They stuck with their game plan for 60 minutes in every game we played them and we got away from it. We've been talking about this the whole year, right? So we won the first period, we go up 2-0 [in the second] - and we've always talked about our second periods, right? And it bit us. It bit us hard. So it's just...I hope they go on and win the Cup."

Information on the 2025-26 season:

The Hershey Bears will return for their 88th season of American Hockey League competition in October. For season ticket information, visit HersheyBears.com.

Check out the Hershey Bears Statistics



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