The AHL's Atlantic Division Finals gets underway tonight with the two-time defending Calder Cup champion Hershey Bears head to North Carolina to take on the Charlotte Checkers.
The Bears secured top spot in the division by finishing two points ahead of the Checkers, both both teams earned a first round bye.
Both teams went the distance in round two, Hershey defeated the Lehigh Valley Phantoms 4-2 in game five while Charlotte knocked out the Providence Bruins with a 5-2 win.
Alex Limoges led the Bears offensively in round one with six points, Bogdan Trineyev leads the team with three goals. The depth showed up with six players scoring at least two goals against Lehigh Valley.
Hershey was without regular season leading scorer Ethan Bear in round one, he has been returned to the team following the Washington Capitals loss to the Carolina Hurricanes.
2024 AHL Goaltender of the Year Hunter Shepard posted a 2-2 record with a .898 SP against Lehigh Valley. Clay Stevenson backstopped Hershey to a game four win before Shepard came back in to close out the series. It will be interesting to see how the goaltending situation is handled is the Bears stumble at all against Charlotte.
Wilmer Skoog and Ben Steeves each had three goals for Charlotte in round two, 10 different skaters registered a goal and 18 picked up a point in five games.
Michael Benning, Trevor Carrick, and Tobias Bjornfot combined for three goals and seven points from the back-end in the series and will be key for the Checkers in round three.
Kaapo Kahkonen started all five games for Charlotte finishing with a .926 SP, 1.78 GAA and a shutout against Providence.
Hershey was awful on the power play (4/29) but fantastic on the penalty kill (19/21) against Lehigh Valley, they will need Bear to help jump start their power play in the division finals. Charlotte went 1/18 on the power play against the Bruins, this series could very well come down to who has the better special teams performance.
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