Ilya Protas is having a season to remember with the Hershey Bears.<\/p>\n
Friday, the 19-year-old Belarusian rookie scored his 21st goal of the season, lighting the lamp on a power play with 2:57 remaining. The goal not only gave Hershey a huge insurance marker late in the game, but also broke a Bears\u2019 franchise record that had stood for 74 years.<\/p>\n
Yes, you read that right: seventy-four years.<\/p>\n
According to the Bears, Protas\u2019 21 goals this season are the most ever by a 19-year-old in franchise history, breaking a record set in 1951-52 by R\u00e9al Chevrefils.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s all coaching right there,\u201d Bears head coach Derek King joked. \u201cHe\u2019s playing a pretty complete game. He still makes his mistakes, his young mistakes, but he battles hard and he\u2019s a talent up front. He\u2019s got some skill, even tonight he hangs around the net on the power play, and in that situation, hopefully the puck goes to you, and he buried it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty special,\u201d Protas said. \u201cReally proud about that, finding out about that, but it\u2019s all the credit to my teammates. Without them I couldn\u2019t have done that, and we\u2019ve got a really good group in there, and I\u2019m happy to be a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chevrefils, born on May 2, 1932, in Timmins, Ontario, played both for the AHL\u2019s Hershey Bears and the NHL\u2019s Boston Bruins that season. The left winger scored 8 goals in 33 games for the Bruins while lighting the lamp 20 times in 34 games for the Bears.<\/p>\n
How long did the record stand? In 1952, Harry S. Truman was the United States\u2019 president, I Love Lucy was in its heyday, and the first major rock-and-roll concert was held \u2014 the \u201cMoondog Coronation Ball.\u201d The nation was just seven years removed from the end of World War II.<\/p>\n
Part of the reason the record stood for so long is the NHL\u2019s longstanding agreement with the CHL, which prohibits teenagers from playing in the AHL. Protas was able to skirt that requirement because he\u2019s classified as an \u201cimport\u201d player, having been drafted out of the USHL (Des Moines) and having previously played in Europe. This season, Protas was eligible to play for the AHL\u2019s Hershey Bears and the OHL\u2019s Windsor Spitfires.<\/p>\n
After the Bears\u2019 4-1 win over Rockford, Protas now has 43 points (21g, 22a) in 52 games. He leads the team in goals and points and sits second overall among AHL rookies in the categories, trailing only Edmonton\u2019s Quinn Hutson<\/a> (24 goals and 45 points).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ilya Protas is having a season to remember with the Hershey Bears. Friday, the 19-year-old Belarusian rookie scored…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-495407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}