Last night the Hershey Bears lost the decisive fifth game of the Calder Cup Finals to the Hamilton Bulldogs. The Bulldogs will now get raises and promotions to the NHL, while the Bears will go home to dark, empty apartments and watch nature shows, searching for an equally absurd example of an obnoxious housepet dominating a bear.

Actually, losing in the finals is a perfectly acceptable outcome from the Capitals' standpoint. Their young players got to play in as many high-pressure playoff games as they would have played if they had been champions. The Bears could probably even have won if last season's unsung playoff lynchpin, Lawrence Nycholat, had been back on their blueline. However, the Capitals wisely traded Nycholat away to Ottawa, where he rode the bench for the Stanley Cup losing Senators. This opened up space in Hershey for Caps prospects Mike Green and Jeff Schultz to play bigger minutes in each game.

Combined with a forward corps that includes once and future Caps Tomas Fleischmann, Jakub Klepis, Alexandre Giroux, Eric Fehr and Dave Steckel, this year's playoffs provided a unique extra opportunity for young Capitals to develop into better players with brighter NHL futures.

The Bears also feature several other players who are expected to play in the NHL. Among them, Chris Bourque and Andrew Joudrey stand out for their high draft position. Joey Tenute earned his way up from the ECHL to play a brief stint in the NHL last season. In the last two games of the finals, though, Tenute was scratched from the lineup in favor of Joudrey. This doesn't speak highly of either player's immediate odds for promotion. Defenseman Jamie Hunt is also highly respected, but several years away.

The Bears also have several good players they found on their own. As one of the only minor league clubs with its own general manager, the Bears joined forces with the Caps last summer for a minor-league free-agent signing spree. They added talented AHLers like Giroux, Kyle Wilson, Matt Hendricks and tough guy Matt Stefanishion. While these players stood out on different clubs, they were just rank and file on a Bears team packed with NHL talent.

Of course, at the end of the season, the Bears also picked up AHL veteran Scott Barney in a trade for Jonas Johansson. A talented Avalanche draft pick who never quite found his groove in the Caps' organization, Johansson will always be remembered by Caps fans as the non-hitting, non-scoring non-player the team got for former captain Steve Konowalchuk. The rough and tumble Barney plays a much more similar style to Konowalchuk and helped the Bears succeed throughout the playoffs.

While Klepis and Fleischmann have proven again that they belong in the NHL, and Dave Steckel strengthened his own case, Barney has been the most exciting story to emerge from this year's Calder Cup playoffs. That is, if you're a Caps fan. If you're anyone else, the most exciting story is that a 19-year-old goalie single-handedly dominated the best team in the AHL.