Every NHL club has a farm system, and the news of a call-up, a trade for “future considerations” or a weekly release from a team in Laredo or Wheeling was once the daily bread of minor league hockey sites. The structure has simplified since then. Today there are two leagues below the NHL that matter, and a handful of independents.
The American Hockey League
The AHL is the top development league. All 32 NHL clubs have an affiliate, most of them wholly owned, and since the 2015 realignment the affiliates sit close to their parent clubs, with a Pacific Division in California and the West. The Calder Cup has been awarded since 1937. AHL rosters are where first-round draft picks spend a season or two, and where veterans on two-way contracts wait for a call.
The ECHL
The ECHL, founded in 1988 as the East Coast Hockey League, is the “AA” level. It absorbed the West Coast Hockey League in 2003 and the Central Hockey League in 2014 and now has affiliates for nearly every NHL team, stretching from Maine to Idaho and Florida. Players move between the ECHL and AHL constantly; a good ECHL season is a normal step toward the NHL for goaltenders in particular.
The leagues that folded
The International Hockey League, once a rival to the AHL, collapsed in 2001 and its strongest teams joined the AHL. The Colonial/United Hockey League ran from 1991 to 2010 and ended in the CHL. The Central Hockey League itself, home of the Laredo Bucks, Amarillo Gorillas and Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs, merged into the ECHL in 2014. The West Coast Hockey League, the Western Professional Hockey League and others were absorbed along the way. Most of the cities lost their teams; a few, such as Fort Wayne and Kalamazoo, moved up to the ECHL.
Independents
Below the ECHL the Southern Professional Hockey League (since 2004) and the Federal Prospects Hockey League (since 2010) operate without NHL affiliation, and the North American Hockey League and USHL feed the college and junior pipeline. The archives of every folded league, game by game, survive at hockeydb.com.
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