Bears Thump Hartford 8-1

April 4, 2026

The line of Andrew Cristall, Ilya Protas, and Bogdan Trineyev erupted for six goals to lead the way as the Hershey Bears (29-29-6-3) took down the Hartford Wolf Pack (24-34-5-3) with an 8-1 win on Saturday night at PeoplesBank Arena.

The Bears concluded their season series with Hartford with a 1-1-2-0 record.

BOX SCORE

NOTABLES:

• Andrew Cristall scored three goals for his first career hat trick, netting a pair of goals in the second period to give Hershey a 2-0 lead by the intermission. Cristall later assisted on goals by Ilya Protas and Bogdan Trineyev to cap a five-point night.
• Protas topped Hershey with six points (1g, 5a), marking the first six-point game by a Bears player since Mathieu Perreault recorded six assists on Nov. 14, 2010 vs. Binghamton, and the first by an American Hockey League player since Alan Quine (3g, 3a) for Stockton at San Jose on Dec. 27, 2019. Protas now leads the AHL rookie scoring race with 62 points (28g, 34a) and ranks sixth in the race for the overall league scoring title.
• Bogdan Trineyev finished the night with a career-high four points (2g, 2a), including his first career multi-goal game.
• Both Protas and Trineyev concluded the game with a plus-minus of +6, matching a franchise single-game record, and marked the first +6 game by a Bear since Tyler Lewington (Feb. 25, 2020 vs. Charlotte).
• Kyler Kupka netted his first career AHL goal at 5:19 of the second period to give Hershey a 4-1 lead.
• Dalton Smith enjoyed a two-point night to match his career best.
• Hershey's eight goals marked the team's largest offensive output of the season, and its four goals in the second period set a new season high.
• The last time Hershey recorded eight goals was Dec. 18, 2021 vs. Wilkes-Barre/Scranton (8-3 W); the last road game the Bears tallied eight goals was March 23, 2016 at Lehigh Valley (8-0 W).
• The victory, combined with a 6-2 Lehigh Valley loss to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, reduced Hershey's Magic Number to secure a berth in the 2026 Calder Cup Playoffs from 10 to six.

SHOTS: HER 29, HFD 35

GOALTENDING: HER - Mitch Gibson, 34-for-35; HFD - Callum Tung [L], 10-for-16, Spencer Martin, 11-for-13

POWER PLAY: HER - 0-for-1; HFD - 0-for-0

THEY SAID IT:

Bears head coach Derek King on coming away with two points tonight in what feels like a must-win game:
"We know how hard it is to win right now - this time of year - and we need the points, and finally we got two on the road, and obviously we created some offense. It was nice to see. [Hartford's] trying to win too, just like everybody else, trying to catch us, and we're trying to catch teams ahead of us, and we've had problems with this team. I know they had a few guys out of the lineup and up with the big club, but we just played a good three-period game, and hats off to the guys, because you could hear them talking between periods, and finally some of those goals went in for us."

King on reuniting Cristall, Protas, and Trineyev and reconfiguring the forward lines today:
"We're trying to score at 5-on-5. I just felt that I needed to even out the [first] three lines, but I wanted to put those guys back together to see if they could give us something again, and it worked out well."

King on the play of Protas at the age of 19:
"He's a pretty humble kid, which is good. He's got to stay that way, but he does some special things out there, and he's going to be a special player. I like how they're taking their time with him, and they're not rushing him. I'll take him for another two years and we'll let him go to the big club. He does some special things, he makes some moves, he sees the ice well. And I like how he's really tried to hone in on playing a 200-foot game. We haven't played these guys in a while, and we've played some other teams we hadn't played in a while. I looked back at my old game cards, and I think Pro was our third-line center at the start of the year. Obviously injuries don't help us, but he's stepped up and he deserves it."

(Answers edited for clarity)

The Bears continue the 2025-26 season, presented by Penn State Health, when they visit the Charlotte Checkers on Saturday, April 11 at 4 p.m. at Bojangles Coliseum. Hershey returns home to host the Bridgeport Islanders on Saturday, April 18 at 7 p.m. at GIANT Center for Racing Night and Toyota License Plate Night, featuring a Bears license plate giveaway to the first 6,000 fans in attendance, courtesy of Toyota. CLICK HERE to purchase tickets for this game.