HERSHEY, PA — The Hershey Bears raised their 13th Calder Cup championship banner to the rafters on Saturday but were missing one of the biggest pieces from their back-to-back title runs. Dylan McIlrath, the team’s captain for the previous two seasons, made the Washington Capitals out of Training Camp, graduating to the NHL again at age 32.
The Bears have not yet named a new captain two games into the 2024-25 season, and that’s how it’ll remain in the immediate future as head coach Todd Nelson waits to see if someone separates themselves both on and off the ice.
“Moving forward, we’re not going to get too excited about the captain situation,” Nelson told Zack Fisch on Saturday. “We’re gonna go with a leadership group with three assistants, and as we go on here, we’ll name a captain. That might be another couple weeks or a month as we see what happens. We had a really strong leadership group in our locker room. There are a lot of good people in there that could be captains, but we’ll figure that out here over the next few weeks.”
Per the team, defenseman Aaron Ness and forward Mike Vecchione, the inventor of the ROAR, will continue to wear an “A” full-time this season. Checking-line center Riley Sutter will wear the third “A” at home, while veteran defenseman Brad Hunt, who the team signed as an unrestricted free agent this summer, will be an alternate on the road.
Nelson added that Vienna, VA native Garrett Roe and first-line centerman Mike Sgarbossa will also be highly involved with the leadership group despite not having anything stitched on their sweaters.
As for if Nelson thought things felt different without his on-ice leader gone, he told RMNB after Saturday’s game, “Yeah, it does. It does. You can’t replace Big Mac out there. He’s the captain the last couple of years. But you know what? That’s how you have to grow as a team. This is our group. We have to grow together.”
