rings true for the players and coaches as well<\/a>. For some familiar names including Capitals Head Coach Spencer Carbery, who coached the Bears for three seasons between 2018 and 2021, it was a preseason game with homecoming vibes.<\/p>\n“Especially the guys that have just been here so recently and won Calder Cups and celebrated on this ice and in this town and in this building, you’ll you never forget the feelings that come with when you walk into those buildings because there’s so many great memories of moments that you just don’t forget,” said Carbery. “I remember spending hundreds and hundreds of hours in this building. It’s just a special place for a lot of people currently in the Washington Capitals organization.”<\/p>\n
For those in the Hershey Bears organization, there was no doubt the fans would make the special night live up to the NHL-type expectations.<\/p>\n
“When this place gets rocking, there’s no other better place to be. They’re going to feel the energy,” said Hershey Bears Vice President of Hockey Operations Bryan Helmer. “It’s going to be cool for [the players who played here before] to get back and hear the cheers. I think it’s going to be a great moment. I think right from the start, everyone’s going to be out of their seats and going crazy.”<\/p>\n
Thursday’s preseason game in Hershey comes ahead of a season where the Capitals and Bears celebrate the 20th anniversary of their affiliation that both organizations say is unmatched in the sport.<\/p>\n
“[The people in the Hershey Bears organization] have such an appreciation and care about the Hershey Bears, and in return the Hershey Bears care a lot about the Washington Capitals,” said Carbery. “In my opinion, and I think there’s a lot of strong facts to back this up, it’s the best affiliation in the NHL and AHL.”<\/p>\n
“If you look at any other partnership throughout the American League, there’s none better than the than the Washington Capitals and Hershey Bears,” said Helmer. “We need to win down here for our fans and for them to be on the same wavelength as us and believe in in winning and developing that way. It goes a long ways and I think it’s only going to get stronger.”<\/p>\n
A strong relationship the fans hope includes another NHL game in Hershey in the near future.<\/p>\n
“This is Bear nation, have they seen the games here,” said Canulli. “I think they need to do this more. I think this needs to be like that every year thing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Washington Capitals return to the GIANT Center brought in more than 10,000 fans for a preseason game…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-169983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}