Garrett Roe's OT goal lifts Hershey Bears to Game 7 win over Cleveland, into Calder Cup Finals (2024)

HERSHEY — It almost all slipped away from the Hershey Bears, on their home ice, in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals Wednesday night at the Giant Center. The quest for a 13th Calder Cup championship — and the first repeat title for an AHL team since 2009-2010 — almost met a bitter end. A historic regular season inched closer to becoming a footnote when Cleveland’s James Malatesta tied the game with five minutes, 52 seconds remaining in regulation. Hershey’s 3-0 series lead that evaporated into the June air added weight to the anxious atmosphere when the Monsters peppered the Hershey net with shots and chances early in overtime.

But the puck bounced to Hershey’s Garrett Roe 7:38 into the extra period, and the 36-year-old journeyman popped it into the net, setting off a celebration of joy and relief for most of the 10,520 fans in attendance and breathing new life into the defending champions. Roe’s goal lifted Hershey to a 3-2 Game 7 victory over Cleveland and earned the Bears a date with Western Conference champion Coachella Valley in a rematch of the 2023 Calder Cup Finals.

“It’s a hard road,” said Roe, who signed with the Bears prior to the regular season. “Obviously we’re going through the battles. But it feels good to win this series. Game 7, we have home-ice advantage. We bought that during the season and took advantage of it. Obviously, we’re thrilled, but it’s a quick turnaround.”

Game 1 of the Calder Cup Finals is scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday at the Giant Center.

The quick turnaround and the run to the Finals is another chapter in Roes’ long hockey journey. The St. Cloud State graduate played for the Adirondak Phantoms from 2011 to 2013 before heading overseas for career stops in Austria, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland and returning to the AHL a decade later.

“He’s just a really mature hockey player, a good guy to be around,” Hershey head coach Todd Nelson said. “He keeps the guys focused. He’s been awesome for us during this stretch.”

Roe’s mother, Julie Roe, died last summer. He honored her by wearing her birthday, June 5 (65), as his number in Hershey.

“She had a helping hand in this somehow,” he said. “I saw a cardinal the other day, and I just feel like that was her. … My mom would have been thrilled to go through this with us, this whole ride.”

The ride has been a bumpy one for the Bears, who were without defenseman Aaron Ness and forward Ethen Frank, their postseason’s leading goal-scorer, due to injury. Pierrick Dubé had missed the previous three games after getting hit in the mouth with a puck in Game 3. Dubé said he lost “a couple” teeth, spent an hour undergoing oral surgery and lost maybe 12 pounds during the recovery. The biggest discomfort was sitting out, he said.

“Being in the stands and seeing all my teammates losing three games in a row was probably the worst feeling in my life,” he said. “Knowing that you can’t control anything. … I wanted to make a difference.”

Wearing a full face shield to protect his jaw, Dubé scored the goal that gave the Bears a 2-1 lead, finding the puck in the slot on a power play and sending a wrist shot through traffic and past Cleveland goaltender Jet Greaves 4:14 into the second period.

“Some of these guys haven’t been in this position before,” Nelson said, “so it’s special for them, and he’s one of the guys.”

One of the guys who had been in this position was Hershey goaltender Hunter Shepard, the Jack A. Butterfield Trophy recipient as last postseason’s most valuable player. Shepard made 42 saves Wednesday night, including all six the Monsters threw at the net in the overtime period.

“They were throwing pucks from everywhere,” Dubé said. “It wasn’t working at all. They were at the net. They were in front of him. He did a great job.”

Trey Fix-Wolansky beat Shepard for the game’s first goal with 58 seconds left in the first period. Before the teams retreated to their locker rooms for intermission, Hershey’s Logan Day answered with a game-tying goal with 19 seconds left, one-timing a pass from Hendrix Lapierre past Greaves, who was engaged with Hershey’s Jimmy Huntington. Cleveland’s players claimed Huntington interfered with the goaltender, but the officials ruled that he had been pushed.

Hershey’s answer stood, and its resilience reigned, eventually.

“We wanted to get through a different way,” Roe said, “but we’re through, and that’s the thing that matters.”