Cherry made his professional debut with the Bears during the 1954–55 season and also played for the club in 1956–57. As a TV personality and longtime commentator on Hockey Night in Canada, this former Bear is one of the best-known figures in Canada in any field. With the demise of the AHL Pittsburgh Hornets in 1956, Bears managers John Sollenberger and Lloyd Blinco were able to acquire the services of seven of the recent Calder Cup champion Hornets' best players including four-time All Star goalie Gil Mayer and the AHL's eventual all-time scoring leader Willie Marshall (523–852—1,205). The most important from Pittsburgh, however, was the AHL's only five-time First-Team All-Star defenseman, Frank S. Mathers, who remained active with the Bears for an unprecedented thirty-five seasons as an All Star defenseman, player-coach, general manager, and club president. Under Mathers' leadership, Hershey won over 1,500 games and six Calder Cup titles while Mathers himself was honored with the Lester Patrick Award in 1987 for his "contributions to hockey in the United States", and in 1992 he became the second individual to be elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame based on a career in the AHL. While the Mathers era in Hershey started slowly with a fourth-place finish in 1956–57, he led the Bears back-to-back Calder Cup titles in his second and third seasons as a player-coach. With Bobby Perreault and Mayer in goal, the league's top two scorers in linemates Marshall and Dunc Fisher, and Mathers himself earning All Star honors on defense for the sixth time in seven years, the Bears won both the regular season and playoff championships in 1957–58. Although Hershey finished the 1958–59 season with just a .500 record (32-32-6), they defeated the Cleveland Barons in the first round before upsetting the regular-season champion Buffalo Bisons in the finals, four games to two, to win their third Calder Cup title. In 1958 the Bears also acquired the services of 23-year-old center Mike Nykoluk who had split the previous two seasons between the Toronto Maple Leafs and their AHL club in Rochester. When Nykoluk retired fourteen years later in 1972, he was the AHL's then fourth (now sixth) all-time leader in points with 881 on 195 goals and 686 assists and his 972 games as a Bear are 219 more than Kullman's second overall 753 in a Hershey uniform. In 1972 his jersey number eight also became the