Former Flyer assistant coach Mike Eaves (1990-93) began a three year run as Bears' coach in 1990-91 which was also to be Frank Mathers' last season at the helm of his beloved Bears. On the night of March 9, 1991, the Arena was packed to the rafters as Hershey and the hockey world gathered to recognize one of the true gentlemen of hockey on "Frank Mathers Night." Among the many guests who traveled in from far and wide were one or more players of each of his six Calder Cup teams, his ninety-year old mother who came from Winnipeg, representatives of many AHL and NHL teams, and many thousands of loyal Hershey fans who came to honor the man who had delivered championship hockey to them for three-and-a-half decades.
After an emotional ceremony at center ice and Frank Mathers' equally heartfelt remarks in response to the love and respect being shown him that night, a banner officially retiring his jersey number "3" was raised to the ceiling of the Arena to join that of Mike Nykoluk. Although officially retired now for almost seven years, Frank Mathers nonetheless continues to serve the game that has been his life as an Honorary Life Member of the AHL Board of Governors and is still frequently called upon by the league for his sage advice and guidance. And as he has now for almost forty years, Mathers still attends almost every Bears' home game greeting almost every fan he meets by name. And thus with the 1991-92 season, HERCO executive Jay Feaster became just the fourth man to serve as GM of the Hershey Bears in fifty-four years while veteran hockey coach and team executive Doug Yingst was named the Bears' Assistant GM and Director of Hockey Operations. (Yingst has since been promoted to General Manager.)
Although by then on the north side of thirty, Tim Tookey -- who was in his third term of service in Hershey -- continued his march up the Bears' all time scoring list with a pair of 100+ point seasons making him the only Hershey player to ever notch one hundred or more points in a single season more than once. With 105 points in 1991-92 and 108 in 1992-93, Tookey also led Hershey in scoring for the third and fourth times in his career while also earning All Star honors for a third time with a Second Team selection in 1991-92. By the time he played his 529th and last regular season game as a Bear in April, 1994, Tookey ranked second only to Mike Nykoluk among the 700-plus players who have ever donned the Chocolate and White livery of the Bears with 251 goals and 442 assists for 693 points.
What is most impressive about Tookey's numbers, however, is that his career average of 1.31 points-per-game with Hershey is second only to his former teammate, Wes Jarvis, who averaged 1.58 in 96 appearances with Hershey between 1979 and 1982 on 52 goals and 100 assists. After a final season as player/assistant coach with the Providence Bruins in 1994-95-and a much deserved appearance in the only AHL All Star Game to be contested while he was an active player-Tim Tookey retired after a distinguished hockey career which saw him appear in a total of 824 AHL games with five clubs while amassing 974 points on 353 goals and 621 assists to place him fifth overall on the list of the AHL's all-time career scoring leaders. On December 9th he joined Arnie Kullman as they both had the same familiar number "9" each wore during their Hershey Bears' careers retired to join Mike Nykoluk's "8" and Frank Mather's "3" high above the Arena ice.
With Mike Eaves' departure in 1993, former Springfield Indian mentor and NHL Hartford Whaler assistant Jay Leach (1993-95) was named the seventeenth head coach of the Bears, and in his first season, 1993-94, he guided the club to its fourteenth career regular divisional title on a 38-31-11 record. Leach's first play-off challenge as Bears' coach was to take on the Rochester Americans-a club that Hershey had faced five times before in post-season action since 1964-65 but had never even come close to beating in any previous series. The Bears-Amerks series in 1994 would be far different, however, as Hershey not only finally eliminated Rochester for the first time in six tries but did so in four straight games. The Bears' quest for an eighth Cup came to an end in the 1993-94 Southern Division Finals, however, as current Flyer netminder Garth Snow led Bob Hartley's Cornwall Aces to victory over them in seven games.
Mitch Lamoureux won his third team scoring title in 1994-95 with 85 points on 39 goals and 46 assists to highlight the Bears' 57th consecutive season in the AHL. And although the team dropped to a third place finish in the Southern Division and was eliminated in the play-offs for the second consecutive year by Cornwall, Milton Hershey's and John Sollenberger's long ago professed faith in the popularity of hockey in Hershey nevertheless continued to be rewarded as the Bears drew an all time record of 262,323 fans to Hersheypark Arena to see them play in 1994-95.
It was also announced early in that 1994-95 season that on January 16, 1996, Hersheypark Arena would be the site of the nationally televised 1996 AHL All Star Game. After a lapse of 35 seasons, the league had reinstituted its mid-season classic in 1995 for the first time since the 1959-60 season with a highly successful game in Providence. The 1996 contest would be just the ninth All Star game ever in league history but the third to be contested in Hershey which had hosted two earlier matches in 1954 and 1959.
The 1995-96 season saw several key changes in Hershey just as the Bears headed into the All Star break. In mid-December it was announced that at season's end the Flyers would reluctantly end their fruitful twelve-year affiliation with the Bears in order to operate an AHL expansion franchise of their own. With the Flyers' scheduled departure from their home of twenty-nine seasons, the Spectrum, at year's end in favor of its neighboring new 20,000+ seat facility, the CoreStates Center, a new tenant was needed for the venerable Spectrum -- thus the birth of the Phantoms. With this new AHL club, Philadelphia -- one of the circuit's eight original member cities in 1936 -- would follow in the footsteps of three earlier Philadelphia-based AHL clubs: the Ramblers, Rockets and Firebirds.
Two weeks later on December 30th the Bears also changed coaches as Flyer Hall of Famer Bill Barber, who had guided the Bears over the final sixteen games of the 1984-85 season, took over the bench duties for the second half of the 1995-96 campaign from Jay Leach. Hershey finished its final season as a Flyer affiliate in second place in the then Southern Division just two points behind Binghamton but were upset by Baltimore, three-games-to-two, in the first round of the playoffs.
The 1996-97 campaign brought Hershey both a new affiliation with the just crowned Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche -- and rekindled an old on-ice rivalry with Philadelphia of a kind not seen since the first year 1938-39 Bears had fought it out tooth and nail with their first arch foes, the Philadelphia Ramblers. With the vast majority of the first year Phantoms' roster made up of former Bears, the intensity of play generated in each of the seventeen regular season and playoff games eventually contested between the two clubs in 1996-97 reached increasingly higher levels as the season progressed. By January every meeting between the two clubs in either building was invariably played to SRO crowds. And with Bill Barber returning to Philadelphia to guide the Phantoms, ironically the Bears were taken over by Bob Hartley who in both 1994 as assistant coach and 1995 as head coach had helped lead his former club, the Cornwall Aces, to playoff series victories over the Bears.
As had also been the case in Hershey's first AHL season in 1938-39, only Philadelphia finished 1996-97 with more points than Hershey-and also (as six decades earlier) these two rivals dominated the league's All Star Teams. Bears' netminder Jean-François Labbe took both the Cunningham (MVP) and Holmes (top goalie) awards to go along with his First All Star Team berth while right wing Blair Atcheynum, Hershey's leading scorer (42-45-87), also collected First Team honors. (Three former Bears -- Darren Rumble, Vaclav Prospal and Patrik Juhlin -- represented the Phantoms on the First Team.) Hershey defenseman Pascal Trepanier rounded out the Bears' all stars with a Second Team berth.
With a 43-27-5-10 mark, the 1996-97 Bears' 101 points broke the century mark for Hershey for just the third time ever -- and for the first since John Paddock's 50th Anniversary club amassed 105 points in 1987-88 and then swept to the Calder Cup in an even dozen games without a loss. As did that club, the 1996-97 Bears would also bring a Calder Cup title to Hershey. But unlike Hershey's 1988 run, the Bears' road to their eighth championship would be a far, far rockier one to travel!
Hershey's first play-off game of 1997 proved to be a harbinger of things to come as it required a trip into double overtime before Blair Atcheynum -- who in the next series would score a triple overtime goal to stave off elimination -- notched the winner in a 4-3 victory over the Kentucky Thoroughblades. After a 3-0 Labbe shutout in game two and a 4-2 loss in Kentucky, the Bears wrapped up the series in four games with a comfortable 5-2 victory. That, however, would be the last time for weeks that the Bears would have a "comfortable" game.
In what many thought were the "real" Calder Cup finals, the Bears next met the league's overall regular season champion Philadelphia Phantoms in the MidAtlantic Division finals. While Hershey had won the ten game season series, 5-3-2, on paper the Phantoms appeared to be clear favorites. To beat them would require hard work, sacrifice, and more than a little bit of luck. Fortunately for the Bears, they got all three.
Trailing by a goal with less than five minutes to go in game one in Philadelphia, Christian Matte and Kurt Miller took advantage of a pair of uncharacteristic Philadelphia mistakes just 40 seconds apart to give the Bears a 4-3 lead to which Matte then added a victory sealing empty net goal. An enraged Phantoms' club then evened the series in game two, 7-4, in a marathon contest that featured, among other things, fourteen game misconducts, a pair of suspensions, and the appearance in the game of five goalies (Labbe, Sinuhe Wallinheimo and Sylvain Rodrique for Hershey; Neil Little and Dominic Roussel for Philadelphia.)
After winning game three, 4-2, at Hershey, the Bears then lost their chance to take a commanding lead in the series when they failed to convert on a power play in the final minute of regulation after coming back from a 2-0 deficit. Instead Philadelphia's Colin Forbes tied the series with a power play marker in overtime for a 3-2 Phantoms' victory. Momentum regained, Neil Little then shut out Hershey, 3-0, in game five in Philadelphia to set up the Bears for potential elimination the following night at Hershey in what would prove to be one of the most remarkable games in the history of Hershey hockey.
With game six tied at 2-2 after sixty minutes, all Philadelphia needed was one more goal to end Hershey's season but Labbe held them off despite facing 18 shots (to just 6 for Hershey) in the first overtime. The second overtime then saw Philadelphia's Little shine as Hershey poured 22 shots his way over minutes eighty to one hundred of the match while Labbe turned aside ten more Phantoms' shots. Through now five periods and almost five hours of hockey, the two clubs had combined for 120 shots and still the match was tied at 2-2.
Blair Atcheynum -- the hero of Hershey's double overtime win over Kentucky in the previous round -- finally ended the suspense just :42 in to the third overtime, however, when he beat Little on a breakaway with the Bears' 57th shot of the night. That incredible Bears' victory also seemed to break the Phantoms' spirit as three nights later they fell to Hershey in game seven in Philadelphia, 3-2, with the Bears getting two goals from Josef Marha who had just returned to the club from a call up to Colorado.
After that draining seven game victory over Philadelphia, however, Hershey seemed to sag badly in the Southern Conference finals as they inauspiciously dropped the first two games -- at home -- to Springfield, 6-2 and 5-3, and then trailed, 3-1, late in game three in Springfield. However Cory Banika got them to within one with 8:01 left, and then, with Labbe pulled in the final minute, Steffon Walby scored with :40 left in regulation when Falcons' goalie Manny Legace was "inadvertently" knocked down just outside of the crease.
To Legace's great distress, referee Denis Larue did not rule interference and let the tying goal stand. Legace's frustration was then compounded when Larue disallowed an apparent Falcons' game winning goal with just a dozen seconds left in regulation. When Mike McHugh scored 2:53 into overtime it was more than Lagace could take, however. He charged after Larue and hit him with his stick resulting in a ten game suspension for the Springfield goalie.
After allowing three goals on the first five shots in game four, Springfield's backup goalie Sylvain Daigle then settled down and shut the door on the Bears while the Falcons scored four unanswered goals for a 4-3 victory and a 3-1 series lead. This, of course, meant that Hershey would have to win three in a row or be eliminated. And incredibly that's exactly what they did as Labbe held Springfield to a single goal in each of the next two games both won by Hershey, 4-1. When a bout of stomach flu forced Labbe to the sidelines early in game seven, however, rookie Marc Denis -- fresh out of junior hockey -- allowed just one goal over game seven's final 41 minutes to earn his first professional victory as Hershey completed its incredible comeback with a 3-1 series clinching victory.
After those fourteen games against Philadelphia and Springfield, the finals against the Hamilton Bulldogs were relatively easy for the battle hardened Bears. It seemed by now that there was no adversity this remarkable team could or would not overcome. After winning game one, 4-2, the Bears were down by the same score in the third period of game two. But just three power plays later Hershey had both erased and then overcome that deficit with a trio of power play goals -- the club's third, fourth and fifth of the game -- to take a 5-4 lead. Even a tying goal by the Bulldogs in the final minute of regulation did not phase the Bears as play-off MVP Mike McHugh won it just :56 into overtime on a two-on-none breakaway for Hershey's only even strength goal of the night.
Hamilton made a bid to make the series interesting with a tight checking 2-1 home ice win in game three but the Bears then polished them off with impressive 4-2 and 4-1 road victories to bring the Calder Cup back to Hershey for the eighth time in their storied history. Despite missing four games Josef Marha led the league in play-off scoring with 22 points (6-16) while Eric Veilleux tied Springfield's Kevin Brown with eleven goals. Hershey captain Mike McHugh became the third Bear to earn the Jack Butterfield Trophy as play-off MVP while also leading the team in +/- at +9. With success, however, comes advancement and when the 1997-98 season -- the Bears' sixtieth -- opened players such as Eric Messier, Pascal Trepanier, Richard Brennan and Blair Atcheynum had moved up to the NHL while J. F. Labbe was signed by Edmonton as a free agent. Ironically he is now playing for the same Bulldogs he helped Hershey defeat in the finals.
As with most things in Hershey -- the chocolate factory, Hersheypark, the Milton Hershey School, the Hotel, the Motor Lodge, and the town itself -- ice hockey's beginnings here were modest indeed. A relatively small number of people attended that first hockey game in Hershey at the Ice Palace on February 18, 1931. But just as Madison Square Garden's legendary duo of dynamic showmen, "Tex" Rickard and Col. John Hammond, had seen in New York six years earlier, that night Milton Hershey and John Sollenberger saw enough in the eyes of those fans -- and in the action on the ice -- to know that hockey would have a bright and wonderful future in their sylvan Central Pennsylvania paradise of Hershey, PA.
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