The American Hockey League will celebrate its 75th season of play with a series of festivities, beginning with throwback games at the opening of the season and an All-Star Game at Giant Center in Hershey, Pa.
The league’s 75th season will kick off on Oct. 8, 2010, with a special set of home-and-home series featuring the AHL’s six senior-most cities. The Hershey Bears will face the Rochester Americans, the Providence Bruins will take on the Springfield Falcons and the Lake Erie Monsters will square off against the Syracuse Crunch while wearing throwback uniforms that will hearken back to the earliest days of the American Hockey League. Providence, Springfield, Cleveland and Syracuse were among the league’s charter cities in 1936, with Hershey coming aboard in 1938 and Rochester hitting the ice in 1956. The logo to the right is from the inaugural season of the Springfield Indians in 1936.
2010-11 Throwback Openers
Fri., Oct. 8 – Springfield at Providence
Fri., Oct. 8 – Syracuse at Lake Erie
Sat., Oct. 9 – Providence at Springfield
Sat., Oct. 9 – Lake Erie at Syracuse
Sun., Oct. 10 – Hershey at Rochester
Sat., Oct. 16 – Rochester at Hershey
The 2011 AHL All-Star Classic will take place at the Giant Center in Hershey, Pa., on January 30-31, and will mark a return to an East vs. West format, pitting players from each of the AHL’s two conferences against each other. This will be the first East-West All-Star Game in the AHL since 1942, and the 2011 event will feature the league’s All-Stars wearing authentic throwback sweaters.
The American Hockey League was officially born in 1936 when the Canadian-American Hockey League and the International Hockey League merged to form the International-American Hockey League (the “International†would be dropped from the league’s name in 1940).
