Consequently, half of the AHL’s teams folded from 1974 to 1977. The league bottomed out within the summer of 1977, with news that the Rhode Island (previously Providence) Reds – the last remaining uninterrupted franchise from the 1936-37 season, and the oldest repeatedly operating minor league franchise in North America – had decided to stop operations after 51 years in Rhode Island. The AHL appeared in serious danger of folding altogether if this downward trend was not reversed. However, two events within the fall of 1977 helped reverse the trend. The first of those was the choice of the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers to return to the league as a group proprietor, and the second was the unexpected collapse of the North American Hockey League simply weeks earlier than the start of the 1977-78 season. The Flyers’ new AHL franchise became the immediately successful Maine Mariners, which brought the new AHL metropolis of Portland, Maine both the regular-season and Calder Cup playoff titles in every of that club’s first two seasons of operation.
The folding of the NAHL, meanwhile, all of the sudden left two of its stronger groups, the Philadelphia Firebirds and Binghamton, New York-based mostly Broome Dusters, with no league to play in. The house owners of the Dusters solved their downside by shopping for the Reds franchise and shifting it to Binghamton because the Binghamton Dusters, whereas the Firebirds crossed over to the AHL from the NAHL. The Dusters and Firebirds, along with the Hampton Gulls (who had joined the league from the Southern Hockey League), boosted the AHL to 9 member clubs as the 1977-78 season opened. Hampton folded on February 10, 1978, however was replaced the following year by the new Brunswick Hawks. With franchise stability bettering after the demise of the WHA in 1979, the league continued to develop steadily through the years, reaching 20 clubs by the 2000-01 season. In 2001-02, the AHL’s membership jumped dramatically to 27 groups, largely by the absorption of six teams-Milwaukee, Chicago, Houston, Utah, Manitoba, and Grand Rapids-from the International Hockey League.
The IHL had established itself because the second top-degree minor league circuit in North America, but folded in 2001 attributable to financial problems. One oddity attributable to the AHL’s 2001 enlargement was that the league had two teams with the identical nickname: the Milwaukee Admirals and the Norfolk Admirals. The Utah Grizzlies suspended operations after the 2004-05 season (the franchise was offered in 2006 and returned to the ice in Cleveland in 2007 because the Lake Erie Monsters, now known because the Cleveland Monsters). The Chicago Wolves (2002, 2008), Houston Aeros (2003), Milwaukee Admirals (2004), and Grand Rapids Griffins (2013, 2017) have all gained Calder Cup titles since joining the AHL from the IHL. The Manitoba Moose moved to St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador in 2011 and had been renamed the St. John’s IceCaps after the NHL’s Atlanta Thrashers moved to Winnipeg because the second incarnation of the Winnipeg Jets. In 2013, Houston moved to Des Moines, Iowa to develop into the Iowa Wild.
This left Chicago, Grand Rapids and Milwaukee as the one ex-IHL groups still in their original cities till the 2015 relocations when the IceCaps moved back to Winnipeg as the Manitoba Moose. Beginning with the 2015-16 season, twelve franchises have since relocated because of NHL guardian clubs’ affect on their improvement groups and gamers. Of the twelve relocated franchises, nine had been relocated because they have been directly owned by NHL teams and the NHL mum or dad membership wished to make name-ups from the AHL extra practical by having closer associates. In January 2015, the AHL introduced the relocation of 5 existing AHL franchises-Adirondack, Manchester, Norfolk, Oklahoma City, and Worcester-to California as the premise for a new “Pacific Division” becoming Stockton, Ontario, San Diego, Bakersfield, and San Jose respectively. The relocated teams had been all affiliated and owned or bought by teams in the NHL’s Pacific Division. St. John’s IceCaps going back to Winnipeg because the Manitoba Moose and the Hamilton Bulldogs turning into one other iteration of the IceCaps to meet the area contract in St. John’s.
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