75 years, 11 cups

Nice to make it to Hershey — first time since that seven-shot night — to see the Bears in their 75th season. Turns out it’s a matchup of two teams outside the top eight right now.

But always neat to be here. “We haven’t been there that often, but I always like going to Hershey,” Scott Pellerin said the other day. “My grandfather was the first captain there back in the ’30s. You look at the atmosphere, the fans — it’s well-done. I think it’s one of the better ones. When you’re there, you’re in an NHL rink. They’re a good, hard-working team.”

That, they are. Bridgeport will have to match them. One to scratch each way; looked like Cantin gets in for Jackson. Kenny Reiter gets the start.

BRIDGEPORT
F: Watkins (C)-Nelson-Backman
Halmo-Sundstrom-Niederreiter
DeFazio-Campbell-Riley (A)
Huxley-Hill-Kabanov
D: Donovan-Wishart (A)
Ness-McIver
Cantin-Landry
(Jackson-scratch)
G: Reiter
DiPietro

HERSHEY
F: Deschamps-Taffe-DiSalvatore (A)
Kane (C)-Potulny-Wellman
Stoa-LeBlanc-Mitchell
Kalinski-Carman-Pope
D: Schilling-Brouillette
McNeill-Orlov
Genoway-Stafford
(Wellar-scratch)
G: Grubauer
Sabourin

R: Chmielewski, Sylvain. L: Lemon, Sylvester.

First Bridgeport game for Tom Chmielewski, who’s from Colorado. Worked this year’s ECHL all-star game. He did a pretty fantastic piece with a TV station in Salt Lake City last year.

Newsy bit: Arthur Staple says he’s heard Brenden Kichton rejected an Islanders offer.

Programming note: Unless there’s a newsy reason, postgameblog probably goes sometime late overnight, so don’t wait up.

Michael Fornabaio