May 12, 2010
The Eastern Conference championship series gets underway Wednesday night as the
Hershey Bears and Manchester Monarchs battle for the right to play for the Calder Cup.
The Bears will have had 12 full days off between games by the time the puck drops for Game 1 of the best-of-seven series, after sweeping away the Albany River Rats to win their fourth East Division playoff title in five years.
Hershey is 8-1 in the playoffs after a 60-win regular season, but the road to the conference finals has had plenty of bumps as the Bears have staged six third-period comebacks and have prevailed in four trips to overtime already this postseason.
Hershey features the AHL’s top three playoff scorers in Alexandre Giroux (10-7-17), Chris Bourque (4-11-15) and Andrew Gordon (9-5-14), as well as the league’s assists leader in Keith Aucoin (1-12-13). The Bears have scored 4.44 goals per game in the postseason and have converted on 25 percent of their power plays, but will be running into a Manchester club that has allowed a league-low 1.50 goals per game in the playoffs to date.
After a third-place finish in the regular season, Manchester got past second-place Portland and division-champion Worcester to represent the Atlantic Division in the conference finals for the second time in four years.
The Monarchs have been riding the white-hot goaltending of Baz Bastien Award winner Jonathan Bernier, who has stopped 296 of 311 shots for a 1.48 goals-against average and .952 save percentage in 10 starts, and the timely scoring of Bud Holloway, whose six game-winning goals in the first two rounds have already tied the AHL record for an entire postseason.
Wednesday's Game 1 can be heard via the BEARS Radio Network. John Walton and Ed Coffey have the call of the action beginning at 6:40 p.m.
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