One of the hardest things in sports is to win a championship. But something even harder than that is winning two championships in a row. Want to go harder? Try three. The Hershey Bears, the AHL affiliates of the Washington Capitals, tried for the elusive three peat but fell short.
The Bears would fall short 6-3 on Wednesday night at Giant Center to the Charlotte Checkers in Game 3 of the Atlantic Divsion Finals.
The series loss to the Checkers ended a remarkable league record nine consecutive playoff series won by the Bears. Bogdan Trineyev opened the scoring for the Bears late in the first period.
He did so by netting his fifth of the postseason at 19:02 from Ivan Miroshnichenko and Jake Masie and that gave the Bears a 1-0 lead.
Trineyev would later assist on Miroshnichenko's third period goal as he finished the posteason as the Bears leading scorer with seven points in eight games with five goals and two assists.
Mike Vecchione would score his third goal of the playoffs at 2:05 of the second period off assists from Garrett Roe and Chase Priskie to extend the lead to 2-0.
Then Charlotte would come back as they answered with goals from Brett Chorske at 3:50 and Michael Benning during four on four play at 6:42 which tied the game at two apiece.
John Leonard, yes the brother of Caps top propsect Ryan, scored at 11:14 to give the Checkers their first lead of the night. Will Lockwood would then make it 4-2. Justin Sourdif then banked one in to make it 5-2.
Miroshnicheko then added his third goal of the playoffs to temporarily stop the bleeding but Rasmus Asplund would answer for Charlotte.
The Bears will be back again in October for their 88th season of AHL competition.