The surprise wasn't that the Coachella Valley Firebirds held a practice Monday morning. The surprise was WHERE: Hersheypark Arena, normal practice home of the Hershey Bears.
CV, fresh from capturing their second straight Western Conference Championship in five games over Milwaukee, decided to take advantage of the Eastern Final still being contested.
If the final were to rematch the Firebirds and Bears, the reasoning went, why not get acclimated to the city and time zone where games one and two would be played. The Bears won the 2023 Calder Cup in a seven game series with the Firebirds.
Later Monday, coach Dan Bylsma and his staff traveled a mile down Chocolatetown Blvd. to Giant Center, where the Bears were hosting the Cleveland Monsters for ECF Game 6.
As the tweet below points out, if there were any doubts about the new Seattle Kraken coach giving the Firebirds his full attention, there shouldn't be. (Besides, if we recall correctly, Dan experienced some good times in Pennsylvania.)
As it turned out, the Monsters forced a 7th game with a remarkable rally. After Hershey took a 2-1 lead at 19:10 of the 3rd period, Cleveland forced overtime with 33 seconds remaining. Jake Christiansen won it for the visitors at 17:31 of OT.
Cleveland, which dropped the first three games of the Eastern Finals, has come back to win the next three and force a deciding Game 7 at Giant Center Wednesday. Should the Monsters win the East, the Firebirds would have gone a long distance just to practice - Games 1 and 2 of the Calder Cup Final would then be at Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert, CA.
By the way, what the Firebirds franchise has already accomplished has been done just three previous times in AHL history, and not since 1979. From TheAHL.com:
"The Firebirds are the fourth club in American Hockey League history to reach the Calder Cup Finals in each of its first two seasons of play, joining the Syracuse Stars (1937-38), the Nova Scotia Voyageurs (1972-73) and the Maine Mariners (1978-79)."
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