AHL Morning Skate: June 22, 2024 | TheAHL.com

Nick Leivermann made his playoff debut in Game 4, the 10th different defenseman employed by the Bears head coach Todd Nelson this postseason.

Leivermann, a seventh-round draft pick out of Colorado in 2017, played five seasons at the University of Notre Dame before signing an AHL contract with Hershey last summer. He was team captain for the Fighting Irish in 2022-2023 and spent most of this season with South Carolina of the ECHL, playing just three regular season games in the AHL.

Leivermann mainly played in a combination with an experienced captain Dylan McIlrath in Thursday’s win.

“He’s done a great job,” Nelson said of Leivermann, who had not played a game since South Carolina’s season ended in April. “He’s a guy who can skate well and move the puck really well. Because he didn’t play for a few months, he found himself in a very difficult situation and played a very strong match.”

Deputy Captain Aaron Nesswho has missed the last eight games due to injury, did a pre-game warm-up before Game 4.

Firebirds head coach Then Bijlsma summed up the Bears in his post-game media availability Thursday: “They are a championship team.”

So he wasn’t surprised that Hershey came through when they needed it most, tying the series at 2-2.

“They brought the speed and forecheck early and stopped us,” Bylsma said. “Not very clean puck execution from us, and that made them play well. We expected it. We got it. They were very good. That was their best game of the series yet.

“It was a desperate time for them, and they brought it.”

Now it’s the Firebirds who have to push back tonight before the series returns to Hershey, where they’ll need to win at least once if they want to win the Calder Cup. Losing tonight would obviously force the Firebirds to play both games at Giant Center.

“It’s a huge game,” Bylsma said of Game 5. “Two teams trying to race to four wins. We expect it to last the entire 420 minutes. There is give and take. Punches are thrown to each side. They took their swings and brought them to us every now and then.

“To get four wins, someone’s going to have to get the third, and that’s coming (tonight).”

After setting a playoff attendance record in 2023, the AHL will break that mark tonight with another full house expected at Acrisure Arena for Game 5.

Last year, AHL teams drew 551,138 fans during 85 postseason games, the most since the league began keeping official attendance figures in 1962-63. Tonight is the 81st match of the 2024 Calder Cup Playoffs.

The postseason average of 6,861 fans per game (so far) is also a league record, as is the total of more than 7.3 million fans between the regular season and the playoffs combined.

― with files from Patrick Williams