Hershey Bears head coach Todd Nelson does not hold back.

Back-to-back Calder Cup championships will not spare his players an honest, frank assessment. Nor will being atop the AHL standings once again. Mind you, this is a 15-5-3-0 club that holds a franchise-record 11-game road point streak (9-0-2-0).

However, a sloppy, undisciplined 5-4 home loss last Saturday against the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins had left Nelson rather peeved. He didn’t like his team’s start. A poor line change had led to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s third goal, a breakaway chance that Emil Bemström finished. The visitors’ winning goal with 75 seconds to go in regulation came off a botched play that led to a 2-on-1 chance that Rutger McGroarty converted.

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Nelson made sure to compliment a quality opponent, but he also picked apart his team, calling those third and fifth goals “horrible.”

“We’ve got to make teams earn their points, not just give it to them,” Nelson said afterward. “That’s the disappointing thing. I’m concerned. I really am. 

The Bears brought back the bulk of the roster that went to June 24 in winning the franchise’s 13th Calder Cup title. The 2024 championship run as well as the 2023 journey both put tremendous demands on many of these players. Nelson has alluded to the challenge of players getting up for early-season games. The Bears also play nightly against opponents who are geared up to face the AHL’s defending champion. Top prospect Ivan Miroshnichenko is on recall to the Washington Capitals while defenseman Hardy Häman Aktell is injured. Dylan McIlrath, who captained the Bears to both Calder Cup titles, made the Washington roster out of training camp and remains there. The 32-year-old hard-nosed defenseman, who also won a Calder Cup for Nelson in 2017 with the Grand Rapids Griffins, had brought a plain-spoken, demanding presence to the Hershey dressing room.

Those may be explanations. Excuses? Nelson has no time for any of that.

“We talk about Calder Cup hangover,” Nelson continued. “It kind of feels that way, to be quite honest. So, yeah, it is concerning.

“Enough’s enough. Players have to understand that there’s going to be accountability, and no one’s safe.”

Four days passing hardly seemed to ease Nelson’s displeasure, either. He reiterated that unhappiness before Wednesday night’s rematch with the Penguins at Mohegan Arena at Casey Plaza, going on the team’s broadcast and delivering more pointed words. A defensive force last season, the Bears had allowed a league-best 2.10 goals per game and possessed the league’s top penalty kill. Coming into Wednesday’s game, they had surrendered 34 goals in their past nine games.

“First off,” Nelson said in that pre-game interview, “there’s a degree of entitlement in the room just based on what we’ve done in the past. That’s gone. We have to focus on the present. We know teams are going to come after us, so we’ve got to be prepared to bring our ‘A’ game every night.

“We have to take a look in the mirror and make sure that we play unselfish hockey.”

The thing is, Nelson has the sort of stature to deliver that kind of message and grab his players’ attention rather than lose it. With his name having gone on the Calder Cup five different times across a span of 30 years, who’s going to question a head coach with those qualifications?

It’s tough love. It’s a recognition that if these players cannot maintain consistency at the AHL level, then how are they going to hit that standard in Washington or elsewhere in the NHL? As extensive as Nelson’s AHL background is, he also has seven years behind NHL benches, including a 46-game interim head-coaching stint with the Edmonton Oilers in 2014-15. He has been an assistant for the likes of Jim Montgomery and Rick Bowness, and he knows quite well the night-to-night demands and consistency that the NHL places on players.

And certainly it is because he sees a team that is capable of more, much more. Since coming to the Bears before the 2022-23 season, he has reiterated that he sees the regular season as a six-month preparation for what really counts, the Calder Cup Playoffs. He has never been one to be particularly impressed with regular-season success. The Bears own enough skill to win on skill alone on many nights. The right process, the right type of hockey is what matters. Regular-season wins are a means to an end, something to get his club into the postseason. Moreover, this is a time to establish the sort of standard that going through two months of postseason play will require.

So, hard-nosed forwards Dalton Smith and Brennan Saulnier went into Nelson’s line-up Wednesday night, adding an abrasive element against an opponent that has plenty of that demeanor as well. Previously Nelson has expressed displeasure with his team’s willingness to stand up to opponents.

Then Nelson’s Bears proceeded to pass along that wrath along to the Penguins. They peppered Wilkes-Barre/Scranton with 16 first-period shots and opened up on the hosts with three goals in a 5:06 span. Three more strikes came in the second period, including one from Ethen Frank, who took his season total to a league-leading 16. Hershey’s work chased Wilkes-Barre/Scranton starter Joel Blomqvist after two periods and six goals surrendered.

Now a home-and-home series with the rival Lehigh Valley Phantoms shows up next on Hershey’s schedule. The Bears hit the road Saturday night for the short trip to PPL Center, where they lost a 2-1 overtime decision last Friday night. This weekend’s home-and-home set concludes Sunday night at Giant Center, where the Bears have had some of their toughest nights this season. After finishing first in the AHL last season with a 29-7-0-0 (.806) home record, the Bears are a decidedly unimpressive 6-5-1-0 in front of their fans this season.

Those Phantoms also figure to be surly themselves after taking a 7-3 home drubbing from the Rockford IceHogs on Wednesday night. Hershey’s December schedule will not let up, either. They see the Penguins twice more this month. A pair of home dates against Charlotte and a visit from Toronto help make up a stretch of 10 games in 26 nights.

Clearly Nelson got his players’ attention this week. Should there be another dip in play, surely they will hear from him again. He knows what the Bears have. Much of this roster helped to put together perhaps the greatest season in AHL history. The Bears posted a .771 point percentage, second only to the 1992-93 Binghamton Rangers’ .775 finish. The difference was that while that Binghamton team exited the postseason early, the Bears fought their way to another championship.

Capitals and Bears management worked to put together another championship-caliber team in the offseason, bringing in the likes of Brad Hunt, Luke Philp, and Spencer Smallman, among others. Hershey has a chance to become the first AHL club to three-peat since Springfield did so in 1962. The Hershey standard is high. And if it sags at all, Nelson is there to put a stop to it.

As Nelson pointed out, “If we just clean up this stuff, our team will be hard to beat.” 

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