SPRINGFIELD, Mass. … The American Hockey League begins its historic 75th anniversary season tonight as an all-time high of 30 teams start down the road to the 2011 Calder Cup championship. The puck drops on the 2010-11 campaign with 28 games over the holiday weekend, including six tonight and 12 more on Saturday. Highlighting the season-opening festivities will be a special set of throwback home-and-home series featuring the league’s six senior-most cities. The Springfield Falcons battle the Providence Bruins and the Lake Erie Monsters tangle with the Syracuse Crunch on Friday and Saturday night, while the Hershey Bears will take on the Rochester Americans this Sunday and next Saturday, Oct. 16. Each team will wear throwback uniforms harkening back to the AHL’s earliest days; Providence, Springfield, Cleveland, and Syracuse were among the league’s charter cities in 1936, with Hershey hitting the ice in 1938 and Rochester coming aboard in 1956. After winning the Calder Cup in both 2009 and 2010, Hershey is looking to become the first team to capture three consecutive AHL championships since the Springfield Indians did so from 1960-62. The Bears open their title defense at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton on Saturday prior to battling the Americans on Sunday. Also Saturday, AHL action comes to Oklahoma City for the first time as the Barons kick off their inaugural season by hosting division rival Houston at the Cox Convention Center, while the Albany Devils take on rival Adirondack in their first game at the Times Union Center. The AHL’s other new entry for 2010-11, the Charlotte Checkers, begin their first season as the top affiliate of the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes with a three-game road trip before their home opener at Time Warner Cable Arena on Oct. 15 vs. Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. The 2010-11 season will feature nine head coaches making their AHL debuts: Albany’s Rick Kowalsky, Houston’s Mike Yeo, Norfolk’s Jon Cooper, Oklahoma City’s Todd Nelson, Peoria’s Jared Bednar, Rochester’s Chuck Weber, Springfield’s Rob Riley, Syracuse’s Mark Holick, and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s John Hynes. In addition to the nine rookies, former AHL coaches of the year Randy Cunneyworth (Hamilton) and Claude Noel (Manitoba) return to the AHL ranks this year following stints as assistant coaches in the National Hockey League. The upcoming regular season comprises 1,200 games leading up to the start of the 2011 Calder Cup Playoffs in April. On Jan. 30-31, the 2011 AHL All-Star Classic presented by Capital Blue Cross will be held at the Giant Center in Hershey, Pa., featuring the top talent in the American Hockey League competing in both the Skills Competition and the All-Star Game. A new format for the 2011 event will pit Eastern Conference All-Stars against their Western Conference counterparts. In operation since 1936, the AHL continues to serve as the top development league for all 30 National Hockey League teams. More than 85 percent of last season’s NHL players were American Hockey League graduates, and for the ninth year in a row, more than 6 million fans attended AHL games across North America in 2009-10.
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