The Hershey Bears are a professional ice hockey team based in Hershey, Pennsylvania, a town located 14 miles east of the state capital of Harrisburg.
The current Bears club has played in the American Hockey League since the 1938–39 season making it the longest-continuously operating member club of the league still playing in its original city.
The Bears organization currently serves as the primary development club for the NHL’s Washington Capitals since 2005-06. Since 2002-03, the hockey club’s home games have been played at Giant Center, located less than half a mile west of Hersheypark Arena, the AHL club’s previous home from 1938 to 2002.
(The arena was also the home to the EAHL Hershey Bears from 1936 to 1938.) The Bears have won 12 Calder Cups, more than any other AHL team. They won their most recent title in 2023.
Chocolate manufacturer Milton S. Hershey first established the “Hershey Hockey Club” in 1932 to manage professional hockey teams based in Hershey. Now in its ninth decade, it has operated four teams in three pro leagues, including the AHL Bears.
Now called the Hershey Bears Hockey Club, it is a subsidiary of the Hershey Entertainment and Resorts Company (originally called “Hershey Estates” and later “HERCO”), the entertainment and hospitality division of the Hershey Trust Company.
Gordie Howe, who was selected into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1972 and was known as “Mr. Hockey”, once remarked, “Everybody who is anybody in hockey has played in Hershey,” although he himself did not play there
Since 1936, the Canadian–American Hockey League and International Hockey League had formed an eight-team “circuit of mutual convenience” playing an interlocking schedule as the International-American Hockey League.
On June 28, 1938, the Can-Am and IHL formally merged into a single league under the IAHL name. One of the first acts of the newly merged league, which became the American Hockey League in 1940, was to grant an expansion franchise to the Hershey Bears Hockey Club, which at the time still owned and operated the EAHL Hershey Bears, the then three-time regular-season champions of that league.
The new Bears took the Bisons’ place in the IAHL’s West Division, allowing the IAHL to play a balanced schedule for the first time in over two years. While the new Bears began play in the IAHL in 1938, the hockey club also continued to operate an EAHL team, the Hershey Cubs, for one more season before leaving that league altogether.
In 1977 Hershey became the only original AHL hockey club to have continuously iced a team in the same city since the league’s inaugural season as a fully merged league when the Rhode Island Reds franchise was sold and moved to New York state as the Binghamton Dusters after the 1976–77 campaign.
The following season, Boudreau’s Bears finished with a 51–17–6 record and appeared to be on the verge of repeating as champions. They rolled through the playoffs defeating Albany in five games, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in five and won the Eastern Conference in a sweep of Manchester. The Bears appeared to have a tenth title wrapped up against Hamilton, who had finished the regular season with 95 points compared to Hershey’s 114.
The Bulldogs, however, upset the Bears 4–1. The next season was disappointing to the Bears – Boudreau was promoted to head coach of the Capitals, and the Bears would finish the season 42–30–2–6, losing to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton 4–1 in the first round.
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