American Hockey League

===Contraction, resurrection, and expansion===
[[File:AHL 50 Jahre.png|thumb|upright=1.1|American Hockey League's 50th anniversary logo]]
After the 1939–40 season the I-AHL renamed itself the '''American Hockey League'''. It generally enjoyed both consistent success on the ice and relative financial stability over its first three decades of operation. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, the cost of doing business in professional ice hockey began to rise sharply with NHL expansion and relocation (the NHL placed teams in Pittsburgh and Buffalo, forcing two long-time AHL clubs, the Pittsburgh Hornets and Buffalo Bisons, to fold) and especially the 1972 formation of the [[World Hockey Association]] (WHA), which forced the relocation and subsequent folding of the [[Cleveland Barons (1937–73)|Cleveland Barons]], [[Baltimore Clippers]], and [[Quebec Aces]]. The number of major-league teams competing for players rose from six to thirty in just seven years. Player salaries at all levels shot up dramatically with the increased demand and competition for their services.

This did not seem to affect the AHL at first, as it expanded to 12 teams by 1970. However, to help compensate for the rise in player salaries, many NHL clubs cut back on the number of players they kept under contract for development, and players under AHL contracts could now also demand much higher paychecks to remain with their clubs. As a result, half of the AHL's teams folded from 1974 to 1977. The league bottomed out in the summer of 1977, with news that the Rhode Island (formerly Providence) Reds – the last remaining uninterrupted franchise from the 1936–37 season, and the oldest continuously operating minor league franchise in North America – had decided to cease 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 in the fall of 1977 helped reverse the trend. The first of these was the decision of the NHL's [[Philadelphia Flyers]] to return to the league as a team owner, and the second was the unexpected collapse of the [[North American Hockey League (1973–1977)|North American Hockey League]] just weeks before the start of the 1977–78 season.

The Flyers' new AHL franchise became the immediately successful [[Maine Mariners (AHL)|Maine Mariners]], which brought the new AHL city of [[Portland, Maine]] both the regular-season and Calder Cup playoff titles in each of that club's first two seasons of operation. The folding of the NAHL, meanwhile, suddenly left two of its stronger teams, the [[Philadelphia Firebirds (ice hockey)|Philadelphia Firebirds]] and [[Binghamton, New York]]-based [[Broome Dusters]], without a league to play in. The owners of the Dusters solved their problem by buying the Reds franchise and moving it to Binghamton as the [[Binghamton Dusters]], while the Firebirds crossed over to the AHL from the NAHL. The Dusters and Firebirds, together with the [[Hampton Gulls]] (who had joined the league from the [[Southern Hockey League (1973–1977)|Southern Hockey League]]), boosted the AHL to nine member clubs as the 1977–78 season opened. Hampton folded on February 10, 1978, but was replaced the next year by the [[New Brunswick Hawks]]. With franchise stability improving after the demise of the WHA in 1979, the league continued to grow steadily over the years, reaching 20 clubs by the 2000–01 season.