2023 Calder Cup Finals

After longest goal drought of season, Ethen Frank sees Calder Cup Finals tally as huge weight off shoulders

HERSHEY, PA — The Hershey Bears were in a dire position coming into Tuesday’s Game Three.

They had been shut out in two straight games by goaltender Joey Daccord and outscored by the Coachella Valley Firebirds 9-0. Facing a 2-0 deficit in the 2023 Calder Cup Finals, a third-straight Bears’ loss would likely prove too difficult of a hole to come back from.

The team had every reason to be nervous. Offense has been difficult to come by in the postseason. Coming into that night’s game, Hershey had averaged 2.66 goals per game through their first 15 contests of the playoffs, relying on good team defense, surprise offense from the team’s fourth line, and stellar goaltender Hunter Shepard to get them this far. The team’s lethal first line in the regular season, which combined for 74 goals and 162 points in the regular season, had scored only three goals in the playoffs and was split up due to injury and a lack of production.

Rookie winger Ethen Frank bear’d most of the weight of that disappointment, going his first 11 postseason games without scoring. To put that in perspective, Frank’s longest goalless drought in the regular season was four games, which he did only twice.

Frank was looking like a shell of his former self as he scuffled to score, but that figurative dam finally broke 13:24 into the first period of Game Three. Frank beat Daccord with a shot from the left circle on the Bears’ first power play of the night, causing a sold out Giant Center to erupt with cheers.

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