Hunter Shepard's sharp focus in goal guides Hershey Bears to back-to-back Calder Cup titles (2024)

HERSHEY — Underneath his brand-new 2024 Calder Cup champions cap, which did its best to try to contain the wavy black hair that spilled out over his shoulders, Hunter Shepard set his eyes on the south end of the Giant Center Monday night, watching his Hershey Bears teammates and their families pose with the Calder Cup during an impromptu photo shoot amid a championship celebration.

For the second consecutive year, Shepard and the Bears reached the mountaintop of minor-league hockey, defeating the upstart Coachella Valley Firebirds in six games to clinch the club’s 13th Calder Cup and wrap up Hershey’s 86th season in the American Hockey League.

From his spot on the Giant Center ice, while still wearing most of his goalie equipment and the sweat from his 17-save performance in the clinching game, Shepard stared at the scene in front of him. His laid-back gaze absorbed a lot of the familiar facets of a champion’s coronation. There were families and television cameras and the occasional beer can. As he soaked in the atmosphere, the 6-foot, 215-pound goaltender noted the difference between Monday’s celebration and the Bears’ 12th Calder Cup clincher against Coachella Valley in Palm Desert, California, almost a year earlier.

“It’s doing it in a place where hockey means so much to all these people,” he said, looking out at what was left of the record-setting crowd in Hershey that stuck around to watch the festivities. “It’s almost July, and you’ve got 11,000 people in this place in the middle of Pennsylvania. It’s a bit crazy, you know? When you really think about it, it’s probably a little unusual.”

He paused while another family posed around the trophy.

“I don’t think, in minor-league hockey, there’s a better place to play.”

Laser-focused

As the anticipation for Game 6 rose among the 11,013 fans at the Giant Center hours earlier, the arena was cloaked in darkness except for the cellphone lights dotting the crowd and the video board hanging over center ice. Downstait’s “Kingdom” – the song associated with the WWE’s Cody Rhodes – blared from the speakers. When the lyrics “Out the curtain, lights go up, I’m home” played, the screen flashed a shot of Shepard, a fan favorite, standing in the tunnel. Behind his mask, the goaltender’s eyes were wide and intense. His pupils were locked into place.

The home crowd roared.

“Hunter is a gamer,” said defenseman Dylan McIlrath, Hershey’s captain. “He’s got that look in his eye on game day, and you don’t want to mess with him. He’s laser-focused.”

Shepard’s focus has been a key ingredient to Hershey’s success over the last two seasons. In 79 regular-season games with the Bears, he compiled a 1.94 goals-against average and a .925 save percentage. At the end of the 2023-24 regular season, his goals-against average (1.76 ) was the best in the league, and his win percentage (.838) was the second-highest in AHL history.

The numbers translated well into Hershey’s last two Calder Cup runs. Shepard started all 20 games in each, posting identical 14-6 records with a 2.38 goals-against average and a .912 save percentage. His three shutouts last spring earned him the Jack A. Butterfield Trophy as the postseason’s most valuable player.

“Shep Daddy, he’s a champion,” said Bears head coach Todd Nelson, who has lifted the Calder Cup at the end of each of his first two seasons in Hershey. “He’s the reason we win championships here. It’s because of Shep. He’s an unbelievable goalie.”

To Shepard, who uses a virtual reality headset for visualization and limits small talk on game days to lock in, the key has been to completely clear his mind while occupying the goal crease.

“It’s just trying to get into that mental state where I’m not thinking,” he said. “It’s not easy. You don’t do it every night. I don’t think I really got into it tonight to be honest. But it’s a seven-game series. You don’t have to be lights out every night. You can’t expect to be because some nights you’re not going to have your best stuff, or maybe there are maybe things that you can’t control. It’s how you respond, and this team, that’s all we did. We responded.”

Shepard allowed 20 goals over the six Calder Cup Finals games against the AHL’s most productive offense, but he also made high-quality saves at pivotal points in the series. His glove save in the first period of Game 2 drew a cheer as loud as any of the Bears’ goals in a 5-2 win. In Game 6, he made a sprawling stop at the end of regulation against former teammate Connor Carrick and fended off the Firebirds’ offensive push during the first shift of overtime.

Moments later, Hershey defenseman Logan Day met Shepard at the Bears blue to celebrate Matt Strome’s Cup-clinching goal in front of a roaring crowd.

“You think you’ve seen a lot of fans here, and then you come in here tonight, and when we scored a goal, at the other end, you couldn’t hear anything,” Shepard said. “It’s not easy to find a place like that unless it’s the NHL or some other major professional sport. It’s pretty great. It’s really fun. It’s easy to get up to play when there are that many people.”

Right place, right time

While Shepard sharpens his focus on game days, his gaze has never wandered too far ahead. Born in Coleraine, Minnesota, he had no college scholarship offers out of high school. He signed with the University of Minnesota Duluth after a stint in the North American Hockey League and served as a backup to the Bulldogs until earning a starting role as a sophom*ore. He went on to backstop the Bulldogs to back-to-back titles in 2018 and 2019, setting program records in goals against average (1.71), save percentage (.925) and shutouts (8) while making 105 consecutive starts.

It was a “right place, right time” situation for Shepard, who credited his teammates the same way he did on the Giant Center ice Monday after celebrating another back-to-back championship scenario.

“There are a lot of talented players here,” he said, “and as a goalie, I’m kind of just fortunate to be here surrounded by players like that.”

Shepard joined the Bears in 2020 but spent most of the 2020-21 season with their ECHL affiliate, the South Carolina Stingrays, due to the latter’s earlier start after the COVID-19 shutdown. He helped the Stingrays reach the Kelly Cup Finals in 2021 before bouncing between the ECHL and the AHL the following season. After his first championship season with the Bears, Shepard made his NHL debut with the Washington Capitals Oct. 25, earning a win against the New Jersey Devils in one of his four games with Washington last season.

The Capitals signed Shepard to a two-year, two-way contract at the end of the 2023-23 season. They also have a vacancy at No. 2 goaltender after trading Darcy Kuemper to the Los Angeles Kings last week.

But on Monday, Shepard kept his eyes on the Calder Cup in front of him and the teammates celebrating around him. If the 28-year-old’s focus shifted at all, it only went as far as his next opportunity to fish.

“I’m just going to enjoy this with everyone, enjoy my summer,” he said. “Whatever happens down the road, I’m just going to do my best.”