The Hershey Bears are setting new records often these days. They won back-to-back Calder Cups and broke records thought untouchable in 2023-24. When their schedule was revealed for the 2024-25 season, they broke another record: longest road trip in team history. Over 22 days, the Bears will play a record ten consecutive games away from their den not long before the season’s conclusion.
March Tradition
Although the trip itself is historic, it is routine that the Bears spend much of March away from home. Giant Center lends itself to local sports championships for high schools yearly during the month featuring basketball and wrestling. Typically, the Bears find themselves on the road for much of the month with home games sprinkled around due to availability. In 2025, the Chocolate and White begin the month with three straight home games and cap off the month with one more.
The scheduling makes it a little easier on the arena staff to transform the venue from hockey to basketball and back again. It’s a penance the Bears pay in order to have more home games during the holidays when demand is at its highest. March happens to be the busiest time for the Bears as they’ll take the ice 14 times, the most in a single month of the season.
Bears Out Of Hibernation
Hershey will travel to seven different destinations in this trip: Chicago, Cleveland, Wilkes-Barre, Springfield, Hartford, Bridgeport, and Utica. The Bears will knock out their travel to Chicago and Cleveland for the season with two matchups each as well as two trips up I-81 to play their fierce rivals. Outside of that, the only game outside of Hershey’s division features the Utica Comets as the first of a home-and-home set.
The Bears travel to Cleveland for a pair of games to kick off the trip, paying the Monsters back for helping them open the season in October. There’s only one game on the schedule, a midweek game in Wilkes-Barre, until the team travels to Chicago. Hershey has not visited Chicago since December 23, 2005, in a 4-3 overtime win for the Bears. Lawrence Nycholat scored at the 4:32 mark of overtime to cap off a comeback from down 3-1 for the win.
After the Chicago set, Hershey plays five different opponents to finish off the five remaining games. They’ll take on upper-Atlantic Division foes Springfield and Hartford, stopping in Wilkes-Barre to cap off three games in four days. They’ll have time to catch their breath before the final two games against Bridgeport and Utica.
Playoff Implications
Ten games in a row on the road is a tall task for the Bears. Thankfully, the Bears have plenty of days to accommodate for travel, and playing sets of games against two foes reduces miles logged. All told, it could be a much more intensive process for the team to play so many games on the road. There will be 12 days with no games during the stretch which will give them opportunity to breathe a bit. They’ll be able to come home and practice in the friendly confines of Hersheypark Arena between games.
It’ll be a unique test so close to the season’s end. After the road trip ends, the Bears will have just nine games remaining before the end of the season. This year’s iteration of the team looks just as competitive as last year’s to be in contention for the postseason. The trip figures to test the team physically and mentally, the same sort of taxing that the playoffs can be.
On the flip side, long road trips tend to be a bonding experience for the players which goes a long way towards overcoming adversity. It’s no secret that the close-knit Bears of 2024 came together to overcome the Cleveland series, going the distance into overtime of Game Seven. It’ll be a good test of the team’s character to pull through this series of games away from home.
