The AHL's History in Syracuse, New York

The Syracuse Crunch have been a steady member of the American Hockey League for nearly two decades. However, they weren’t the first to represent the New York city in the AHL. Syracuse and the AHL have a checkered past.

Syracuse Stars

The Stars brought hockey to Syracuse for the 1930-31 IHL season. This was the original IHL, a league that would evolve into the AHL over the following decade. The Stars franchise moved to Syracuse from Hamilton, Ontario, where they were known as the Hamilton Tigers. After the 1939-40 season, the franchise was moved back out of Syracuse to become the second coming of the Buffalo Bisons.

The Syracuse Stars were the first team to win the Calder Cup. In 1936-37, the inaugural year of the Calder, the Stars met the Philadelphia Ramblers in the finals and came out victorious three games to one. During the regular season, Syracuse finished first in the West Division and second overall in the eight team league. The team was led in scoring by Jack Markle and placed five players among the top ten for points.

Syracuse Warriors

The American Hockey League returned to Syracuse for the 1951-52 season. The city acted as a temporary home for the Springfield Indians for three seasons from 1951-52 to 1953-54. During that time, the team was named the Syracuse Warriors. The Warriors played just one playoff series, losing to the Cleveland Barons in the opening round of the 1952-53 Calder Cup playoffs.

Syracuse Eagles

During the 1973-74 AHL season, the Cleveland Barons, one of the league’s oldest franchises, relocated to Jacksonville midway through the year. The following year, the Jacksonville Barons became the Syracuse Eagles. 1974-75 was the only season for the Eagles, folding at the end of the year. With exception of the Baltimore Clippers, a team that folded after playing just 46 games, the Eagles had the worst record in the ten team league.

Unfortunately for the Eagles, the Syracuse Blazers of the North American Hockey League were enjoying great success. Even though the NAHL was a lower quality league, the city wasn’t big enough to support two pro hockey teams and the fans rallied behind the team that was winning.

 

Syracuse Firebirds

The Blazers died along with the NAHL after the 1976-77 season. Ironically, the AHL was revived in Syracuse for the 1979-80 season when a former NAHL team relocated to town. The Philadelphia Firebirds came into existence for 1974-75, the second of four years that the NAHL existed. They won the Lockhart Cup as NAHL post season champions in 1975-76. The franchise switched to the AHL after the 1976-77 season.

Moving to Syracuse was a last ditch effort for the franchise. After just one year, the Firebirds folded. The team did reach the post season but lost in the opening round to the Hershey Bears.

Syracuse Crunch

The city would go without AHL hockey for close to fifteen years before the Crunch came to town. Ironically, just like the Syracuse Stars, the Crunch are a relocated franchise from Hamilton, Ontario. It all started out as the Hamilton Canucks in 1992-93. Their time in Canada was short lived and the Crunch were born. The Crunch are an affiliate of the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning. They have yet to capture their first Calder Cup championship.

Vintage Hockey Card Video Series

As I write this, I'm fighting with some sort of glitch that is freezing up the upload for the final of six videos featuring vintage hockey cards from the NHL's Original 6 teams. This is just a shout out to anyone reading 'Hockey History Hub' that these videos are nearly 100% online at YouTube. If you're reading something here and enjoying this site, then chances are you'll want to kill some time looking at some of the greatest in the game's history on some classic cardboard.

Each of the Original 6 team videos has at least 100 different vintage hockey cards and each video lasts between three and five minutes. Each is produced with what I think is some pretty great background music. So, if you're at work, yes - there is audio so turn it down...

Mostly, the cards are from the 1951-52 to 1979-80 range and come from sets produced by Parkhurst, Topps and O-Pee-Chee. There are cards from before and after the range in some of the videos but not a whole lot. Because it just didn't look right to have 'landscape' card fronts mixed with the usual 'portrait' fronts, some years have been left out. These would be your 1963-64 Topps, 1968-69 O-Pee-Chee and sets like that. Also, we didn't put in any of the 1964-65 Topps tallboys because they just wouldn't fit the format (yep, I'm a little anal about that stuff...).

All the cards are included in the Virtual Hockey Card Collection at Vintage Hockey Cards Report. This is what is becoming a fairly complete online collection of hockey cards (front and back). This is a project that I hope will expand beyond the NHL and the range of years given above. I plan to move into minor league, junior and even European sets in the relatively near future. It's pretty time consuming, though. The images have to be collected, straightened, cropped then added to a template and uploaded. I'm not the most technical so my method is pretty labour intensive (aka slow).

I've embedded one of the videos below to give you a taste. Hopefully you'll head over to the YouTube channel to check out the others. Links to each video are found in the index of the Virtual Collection. I've also grouped them into a clean and tidy YouTube playlist so they can be watched consecutively without having to keep hitting play...

The video below features the Chicago Blackhawks. Of course, there's a fair share of Bobby Hull, Glenn Hall and Stan Mikita cards but there's a lot more there, as well. Be sure to hit the Thumb's Up if you like it!

6 From 1982-83 Portland Winterhawks With 100+ Points

For the Portland Winterhawks, it was business as usual in the 1982-83 Western Hockey League. The franchise had been dominant in the WHL since relocating from Edmonton, Alberta for the 1976-77 season. The Winterhawks are descendants of the original Edmonton Oil Kings team.

In 1982-83, Portland finished first in the West Division and second overall in the WHL with 50 wins and 100 points over the 72 game regular season schedule. The only team with a better record was the East Division leading Saskatoon Blades with 105 points. The Winterhawks led the WHL with 495 goals.

In the playoffs, Portland plowed through the Seattle Thunderbirds and Victoria Cougars before meeting up with the Lethbridge Broncos in the finals. Despite finishing the regular season with 21 points less than Portland, the Broncos took the series in five games. However, because Portland was hosting the Memorial Cup, both teams advanced. The Winterhawks got their revenge by winning the national title with an 8-3 victory over the Oshawa Generals in the final game.

On that 1982-83 Portland Winterhawks team were six players with 100 points or more. Just short of 100 was rookie Ray Ferraro. The following season, Ferraro would set the as yet unbroken record of 108 goals in a single WHL season while playing for the Brandon Wheat Kings.

Ken Yaremchuk – 160

It was third full season and final full season with Portland over a WHL career where Yaremchuk produced 424 points in just 210 games. In the high offense WHL, Ken’s 160 points placed him just sixth in the league.

Yaremchuk was the seventh overall pick by the Chicago Blackhawks at the 1982 NHL Entry Draft. He went on to play 235 regular season games in the National Hockey League between 1983-84 and 1988-89 with Chicago and the Toronto Maple Leafs. Ken rounded out his professional hockey career playing in Switzerland from 1990-91 to 1998-99.

Randy Heath – 151

Heath was in his second of three years with Portland in 1982-83. His 82 goals placed him second in the WHL, behind Dale Derkatch of the Regina Pats with 84. Randy was a second round pick of the New York Rangers in 1983 and went on to play a total of 13 games with the club in 1984-85 and 1985-86. Like Ken Yaremchuk, Heath finished his pro career in Europe, playing in Sweden’s Elitserien.

Cam Neely – 120

Inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2005, Cam Neely was in his rookie WHL season in 1982-83 and his only full season in the league. The following year, Neely played just 19 games with the Winterhawks before being called up to the Vancouver Canucks to finish the season. The Canucks had chosen him ninth overall at the 1983 NHL Entry Draft.

Cam played 726 regular season games in an injury shortened NHL career. He played for the Canucks and the Boston Bruins but, of course, the bulk of success came while wearing a Bruins jersey. He scored 395 goals over his career with two seasons with 50 or more. In 1989-90, he scored 55 for Boston. In 1993-94, in perhaps one of the most underrated performances in hockey history, he scored 50 goals while playing just 49 games for the Bruins.

Grant Sasser – 119

1982-83 was Grant’s second of three seasons with the Winterhawks. He was a fifth round pick of the Pittsburgh Penguins after just his first year of WHL hockey. His only three NHL games came in 1983-84 with the Penguins before being sent back down to Portland. Sasser played one year of pro hockey after junior. In 1984-85, he split the year between the Baltimore Skipjacks of the American Hockey League and the Muskegon Lumberjacks of the IHL.

Richard Kromm – 103

Kromm was in his second of three seasons with Portland but would play just ten games in 1983-84 before being called up to the Calgary Flames. Richard was a second round pick of the mighty New York Islanders in 1982. He would get his chance to play for the Islanders but started his NHL career in Calgary with the Flames. He played 372 regular season NHL games between 1983-84 and 1992-93 with the Flames and Islanders.

Richard immediately moved on to a life of coaching after the 1992-93 season. He has since coached in the IHL, AHL, UHL, WHL, CHL and ECHL. Kromm was head coach of the Winterhawks for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 season. The past three years, he has coached the Evansville Icemen. For the first two years, the team was in the Central Hockey League. This past season, 2012-13, the Icemen were members of the ECHL.

Brad Duggan – 100

Between 1980-81 and 1983-84, Duggan roamed the Western Hockey League, playing for the Billings Longhorns, Saskatoon Blades, Portland and the Brandon Wheat Kings. Of his 100 points in 1982-83, just 16 were goals. The soft handed defenseman recorded 84 assists. Brad did not continue on to play professional hockey.