Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
How long ago was November 7, 1936?
Eighty-nine years ago today, what is now known as the American Hockey League began its inaugural season. Hockey on a Saturday night, a tradition that continues to this day.
But the AHL’s history goes way beyond numbers. Today’s 32-team circuit, with one-to-one affiliations with each NHL club and stretching from Quebec to California, had much humbler beginnings.
|
Life in 1936
|
Go back to the end of the 1935-36 hockey season. The Canadian-American Hockey League and the International Hockey League had spent the better part of the past decade trying to establish themselves as viable circuits. It was not exactly an ideal time to try to launch and grow a league. The Great Depression raged, with soaring unemployment rates. Another world war loomed on the horizon. And hockey as a sport still had to establish itself.
Just the logistics of running a league proved much more difficult. The United States did not have an interstate highway system in 1936; inter-city rail travel was the way to go. Television as a marketing tool was long off, let alone the internet.
And so the Can-Am and International leagues went through considerable struggles. By 1936, it was clear that they had to change tactics. So on October 4 of that year, the two sides combined: Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Syracuse from the IHL joined with New Haven, Philadelphia, Providence and Springfield from the CAHL. They went with the “International-American Hockey League” as their new moniker.
Business moved rapidly. Five weeks later, the I-AHL was on the ice. The New Haven Eagles visited the 1936 Can-Am champion Philadelphia Ramblers. The Springfield Indians hosted the Providence Reds. The Syracuse Stars took on the Buffalo Bisons, and the Cleveland Falcons battled the Pittsburgh Hornets.
New Haven visited Philadelphia while Providence headed to Springfield in Eastern Division play. Out in the Western Division, it was Syracuse in Buffalo and Cleveland going to Pittsburgh. All eight clubs hit the road and completed home-and-home series the next day.
The new league was off and running, but not without difficulties. Just 11 games into the season, Buffalo had to withdraw: the Bisons’ home arena in Fort Erie, Ont., had been badly damaged in a snowstorm the previous March, and the team was hit with financial troubles playing out of a rink in Niagara Falls.
But the I-AHL carried on. The storied Hershey Bears joined in 1938, bringing it back up to eight teams and giving it what would become a flagship market. The league simplified its name to the “American Hockey League” in 1940 and continued to grow, entering cities like Indianapolis, St. Louis, Washington, Cincinnati and Rochester, N.Y. An interlocking schedule with the old Western Hockey League came about in 1965, sending AHL teams on the road to places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver. The league survived challenges from the World Hockey Association in the 1970’s and the International Hockey League in the 1990’s, and a full-fledged move to the West Coast in 2015 has brought the AHL to where it is today.
Society has changed. Styles have changed. Hockey and its rule book have changed dramatically. But the AHL still moves along.
Tonight’s schedule sees the Providence Bruins visiting the Cleveland Monsters, two cities that trace their AHL histories back to day one. Syracuse and Springfield are in action also. The AHL has plenty planned to commemorate its 90th-anniversary season as this campaign moves along, celebrating a league that has always found a way to survive and grow.