Rocky Thompson sparks Bridgeport turnaround, Islanders reach playoffs against Hershey

Rocky Thompson did not arrive in Bridgeport as a feel-good hire. He arrived as a hard-edged former enforcer with 566 AHL games, 1,919 penalty minutes and a mandate to change the way the Islanders thought, skated and competed. Less than a year after he was named the 10th head coach in franchise history on June 23, 2025, Bridgeport had gone from a 57-loss season to a legitimate Calder Cup threat just in time for its first-round series with Hershey.

The turnaround started with habits. Thompson pushed a better conditioning standard and a more physically demanding, aggressive, skating-intensive system that asked Bridgeport to move the puck up ice instead of surviving on scraps. Veterans Chris Terry, Adam Beckman and Liam Foudy were central to the response, helping the room move past last season’s failure and buy into a faster, more direct identity. The payoff showed up in the standings and in the schedule: Bridgeport won 10 of its final 13 regular-season games, closed the year with four straight victories over Hershey and reached the postseason for the first time since 2022.

That late surge was not empty noise. Bridgeport clinched its playoff spot on April 12 with a 4-1 win over Hartford, then locked up fourth place in the Atlantic Division by beating Hershey 2-1 in the final regular-season game on April 18. The Islanders also finished with a 10-game home winning streak and a 21-12-1-2 record at Total Mortgage Arena, a strong enough home profile to give them the No. 4 seed and home-ice advantage against the No. 5 Bears.

The best-of-three series opens Tuesday in Bridgeport, with Game 2 set for Thursday in Hershey and a possible Game 3 back in Bridgeport on Saturday. Bridgeport beat Hershey in all four regular-season meetings in the final month, a run that turned a familiar divisional opponent into a reminder of how far Thompson’s group has come.

The timing gives the playoff push an added edge. The parent New York Islanders have announced plans to move the AHL club to Hamilton, Ontario for 2026-27, pending league approval, making this run both a competitive breakthrough and the final postseason chapter of a 25-year era in Bridgeport. For a franchise that spent much of 2024-25 buried in losses, Thompson has turned the last month into something rarer: a season that ended with belief, home ice and a chance to keep playing.