Bruce Boudreau left the Hershey Bears for Washington to coach the Capitals on Thanksgiving Day 2007, taking plenty of things with him.

On-ice systems and players headed south right away. Eventually, assistant coach Bob Woods joined him inside the Beltway.

In addition to the 2005-06 Calder Cup banner that hangs from the rafters, Boudreau left another enduring legacy at Giant Center: the gallery of pucks.

Just inside a doorway to the Hershey dressing room, wooden plaques with 16 circular openings line the walls. Those openings are filled with pucks from each Bears victory since 2005, 359 of them in all.

“Bruce started that in Manchester (when he coached the Monarchs) and had good results,” Hershey athletic trainer Dan “Beaker” Stuck said. “So after he said something to us about it, I thought it was a neat idea for us to start it. And as you can see, he left and we kept it going.”

Beginning with the 2005-06 season, a puck is taken off the ice at the end of every Hershey win. The pucks are placed in one of the holes on the plaques and held in place by double-sided tape. Through the first four games of 2011-12, they total 295 from the regular season and 64 from the playoffs.

“It’s nice that it’s been in place for a number of years now,” Bears coach Mark French said. “There’s a little bit of a history to it. “When you walk down that hall, you can see different pucks from various teams. You often see guys stop and take a different look at the various years.”

'Part of the tradition here'

Considering Hershey won Calder Cups in the springs of 2006, 2009 and 2010, there’s an awful lot of rubber on display.

“It’s not something you think about very much, but you walk by the wall every day,” Bears captain Boyd Kane said. “And when you see them add up during the season, it’s pretty neat. “When you look back now over the seasons, when you see how many pucks there are and how many wins there were, it’s pretty impressive.”

Kane said it’s now part of the organization’s history, not unlike displaying team photos of Hershey’s 11 Calder Cup championship squads. They hang on a wall in the hallway leading from the dressing room to the shower and training room.

“It’s huge, part of the tradition of playing here,” Kane said. “Everybody probably knows someone in a lot of those pictures who played here, at least in the recent ones. New guys come in and they want to be part of the tradition.”

And part of that involves celebrating each victory by taking a game puck – regardless of how chipped and scuffed it might be – and placing it on a plaque, a duty usually reserved for Stuck or equipment manager Justin Kullman.

Among the more impressive parts of the collection: pucks from defunct teams, including the Lowell Lock Monsters and Albany River Rats; pucks from the 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2010 AHL title series adorned with the Calder Cup logo; and two pucks from April 2010, when the team set the league mark for wins (No. 58) and reached the 60-victory plateau.

Recently, the 48 pucks from 2010-11 were removed from the wall just inside the dressing room. It’s only temporary as they’re being relocated to a new spot elsewhere. But three from the current season have already been placed in plaques mounted outside of French’s office.

If Stuck had his druthers, the 2005-06 pucks would be displayed where fans could see them up close.

“If we ever have a Hershey Bears Hall of Fame, I think you take the first season’s plaques we did and you put them there,” Stuck said. “And then every year you take one set off the wall and move it to the Hall of Fame. That way you add one every year.

“It’s really a neat thing, especially when you win the Cup. You look back and see how many games we won at home or on the road. And then you see the playoffs. It’s just really cool.”