The Hershey Bears were the first team in the AHL to clinch a playoff berth. After a 4-2 win over the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins on Friday night, the Bears can now also call themselves Atlantic Division champions.
With the win, the Bears (96 points) can no longer be chased down by the Charlotte Checkers (92 points) due to the four-point gap between the two teams atop the division. Both teams play their final regular-season games on Saturday night.
Winning the division means the Bears will have home-ice advantage for both the Atlantic Division Semifinals and Atlantic Division Finals. Hershey had already previously secured a first-round bye in this year’s postseason.
The division win marks the 20th regular-season division title in franchise history. Hershey cannot win the Eastern Conference as the Laval Rocket clinched the Macgregor Kilpatrick Trophy as the AHL team that finishes the regular season with the most points after a 5-1 win over the Belleville Senators.
With one game remaining against the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, the Bears hold a 44-19-8 record. They were pushed to their win on Friday by goals from Ivan Miroshnichenko, Hendrix Lapierre, Bogdan Trineyev, and Matt Strome.
The Bears will enter the 2025 Calder Cup playoffs looking to three-peat as champions, a feat only achieved once prior by the 1960-62 Springfield Indians.
