Did your team miss the Calder Cup Playoffs last season? Was it an early postseason exit? Or did you experience a playoff run deep into May and June?
It may have only been a few months since your team last played a game, but plenty has changed since the Abbotsford Canucks celebrated their Calder Cup victory back on June 23. Few leagues in hockey experience as much offseason as the AHL does. Between player movement, coaching changes, and the annual infusion of first-round picks into the pro game, keeping up on the AHL
Before you know it, it’s October, and opening weekend has arrived. Here is a refresher primer on how the AHL operates as well as everything new as the league opens its 90th anniversary season.
The basics
The AHL will play its standard 72-game regular-season schedule spread out across four divisions.
Come April, the Calder Cup Playoff format remains the same as well with a 23-team field.
A nod to history
Go back to 1936. That’s when what is today the AHL began play as the International-American Hockey League. It was an eight-team circuit with the Buffalo Bisons, Cleveland Barons, New Haven Eagles, Philadelphia Ramblers, Pittsburgh Hornets, Providence Reds, Springfield Indians, and Syracuse Stars. Buffalo ended up having to pull out of the league a month into the regular season, though the AHL would eventually return to that city. Syracuse captured the league’s first title.
Two years later, the league renamed itself the AHL. The Hershey Bears joined the league for that 1938-39 campaign and have remained a member ever since.
Over the AHL’s first 30-plus years, it had far less of an emphasis on player development, and NHL affiliations were much looser. By the time the NHL doubled in size to 12 teams in 1967, the AHL had started to shift to something more development-oriented. Decades later, the league has grown to 32 teams – one team for each NHL club – and is a coast-to-coast operation.
Expect teams to celebrate the league’s history as well as their own as this 90th anniversary season proceeds.
Going to the Midwest
For the first time since 2004, the AHL All-Star Classic will be going to the Midwest. The Grand Rapids Griffins hosted the event that year. This February it will be the Rockford IceHogs hosting the 2026 AHL All-Star Classic presented by BMO on Feb. 10-11. The Tuesday-Wednesday format will feature the AHL All-Star Skills Competition on the first night followed by the AHL All-Star Challenge, a 3-on-3 round-robin battle, the following evening.
A new Calder Cup champion
Hershey had to step aside last May as a bid to become a three-peat Calder Cup champion fell short.
Into that void stepped Abbotsford, a team that fought its way through five rounds of the Calder Cup Playoffs and finished off the Charlotte Checkers in a six-game Calder Cup Finals. Much like the 2015-16 Lake Erie Monsters, these Canucks emerged as a second-half team that continued to improve. By the time that the postseason arrived in April, they had grown into a team capable of being a legitimate Calder Cup threat. Along the way, they took out the likes of the Colorado Eagles, Texas Stars, and Charlotte to bring the first Calder Cup to the Vancouver Canucks organization.
A deep field of top rookies
The NHL’s top developmental league will again feature some of the game’s best young prospects. FloHockey prospects expert Chris Peters features 16 of those top names.
Taking over
A parade of new head coaches – along with familiar names getting another shot – arrived this summer.
In the Eastern Conference, Rocky Thompson takes over with the Bridgeport Islanders. So does Derek King with the Hershey Bears. They are joined by John Snowden (Lehigh Valley Phantoms). Out west, it’s Greg Cronin who will now lead the Iowa Wild. Brett Sutter (Calgary Wranglers), Mark Letestu (Colorado), Andrew Lord (Ontario Reign), Jared Nightingale (Rockford), and Toby Petersen (Texas) are all starting their first AHL head-coaching tenures.
Firepower in Providence
The Boston Bruins have long taken good care of the Providence Bruins, and this season appears to bring more of that same abundance. This summer brought more of the same for the longest-running NHL-AHL affiliation, one that goes back to the 1992-93 season.
Matěj Blümel posted a league-leading 39 goals last season for the Texas Stars. Right behind him in a second-place tie was Alex Steeves of the Toronto Marlies with 36 tallies. Both players went to free agency, and both players landed with the Boston organization. After training camp in Boston, the pair are with Providence to provide a potent one-two combination for head coach Ryan Mougenel.
One final go for a Rochester legend
The storied red-white-and-blue shield logo, year-in-and-year-out rivalries with the Syracuse Crunch, the Blue Cross Arena, and Don Stevens.
History counts for a lot with the Rochester Americans, and Stevens has been part of the tradition for the Amerks for since the mid-1980s AHL. The AHL’s longest-tenured play-by-play broadcaster, Stevens started in Rochester for the 1986-87 season and has stayed there ever since. Stevens will have one final season calling Amerks games before he wraps up his 40th campaign with the team. He announced Sept. 25 that he will retire after the 2025-26 season. Along the way he has called seven trips to the Calder Cup Finals for the Amerks, including championships in 1987 and 1996. His tenure also includes more than 3,300 Amerks contests and documenting the careers of several legendary Amerks, including Jody Gage, Ryan Miller, Chris Taylor, John Tortorella, and John Van Boxmeer among many others.
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