page_title: Hershey Bears
section_title: The Bears join the IAHL
hierarchical_section_title: Hershey Bears / Team history / The Bears join the IAHL
caption_attribution_description: English: I-AHL Consolidated, June 28, 1938
context_page_description: The Hershey Bears are an American professional ice hockey team based in Hershey, Pennsylvania, a town located 14 miles east of the state capital of Harrisburg. The current Bears club has played in the American Hockey League since the 1938–39 season making it the longest continuously operating member club of the league still playing in its original city.
  The Bears organization currently serves as the primary development club for the NHL's Washington Capitals since the 2005–06 season. Since the 2002–03 season the hockey club's home games have been played at Giant Center, located less than half a mile west of Hersheypark Arena, the AHL club's previous home from 1938 to 2002. The Bears have won 11 Calder Cups, more than any other AHL team. They won their most recent title in 2010.
  Chocolate manufacturer Milton S. Hershey first established the "Hershey Hockey Club" in 1932 to manage pro hockey teams based in Hershey. Now in its ninth decade, it has operated four teams in three pro leagues, including the AHL Bears.
context_section_description: Since 1936, the Canadian–American Hockey League and International Hockey League had formed an eight-team "circuit of mutual convenience" playing an interlocking schedule as the International-American Hockey League.
  On June 28, 1938, the Can-Am and IHL formally merged into a single league under the IAHL name. One of the first acts of the newly merged league, which became the American Hockey League in 1940, was to grant an expansion franchise to the Hershey Bears Hockey Club, which at the time still owned and operated the EAHL Hershey Bears, the then three-time regular season champions of that league. The new Bears took the Bisons' place in the IAHL's West Division, allowing the IAHL to play a balanced schedule for the first time in over two years. While the new Bears began play in the IAHL in 1938, the hockey club also continued to operate an EAHL team, the Hershey Cubs, for one more season before leaving that league altogether. In 1977 Hershey became the only original AHL hockey club to have continuously iced a team in the same city since the league's inaugural season as a fully merged league when the Rhode Island Reds franchise was sold and moved to New York state as the Binghamton Dusters after the 1976–77 campaign.
  Defenseman Henry J. "Hank" Lauzon, an original EAHL B'ar, became the first player to sign with the new Bears.  The former EAHL club's coach, Herb Mitchell, guided the IAHL Bears for their first three seasons. The Bears made a very good account of themselves in their first IAHL campaign, winning the West Division with a 31–18–5 record—the first of 16 regular-season division titles.  However, they were defeated in the first round of the Calder Cup play-offs by the New York Rangers' top farm team, the Philadelphia Ramblers, three-games-to-two. Defenseman Herb Kalbfleisch became the first Hershey player to be named a First Team All Star that year while goalie Alfie Moore took Second Team honors behind the Ramblers' Bert Gardiner.
  Former Boston Bruins' coach and Hockey Hall of Fame member (elected 1971) Ralph "Cooney" Weiland guided Hershey throughout the war years winning regular season titles in 1942–43 and 1943–44.  The Bears' 13 losses in a 1942–43 are still the fewest by the club in a single season while Wally Kilrea's 99 points (31-68) that season gave Hershey its first of ten AHL scoring champions. Hershey won their first of 11 Calder Cup titles in 1947 under second year coach Don Penniston while also winning their fourth Division title in just nine seasons that year dominating the AHL's East with 84 points (25 more than second place Springfield) on a record of 36–16–12 behind All Star goalie Harvey Bennett, Sr.  In the play offs Hershey defeated the Western Division champion Cleveland Barons in a four-game first round sweep outscoring them 24–3 before winning the Calder Cup finals in seven games over the Pittsburgh Hornets.
  In 1948, 21-year-old Winnipeg-born center Arnie Kullman joined the Bears, and except for 13 games with the Boston Bruins in 1949–50, he played his entire twelve-year career in Hershey. When Kullman retired in 1960 he had amassed 629 points on 253 goals and 376 assists in a Hershey uniform, a total which would only be eclipsed by Tim Tookey (with whom he shared number nine that was eventually retired in honor of both players) and Mike Nykoluk.  Kullman's 753 games as a Bear is also second only to Nykoluk's 972.
caption: Newspaper clipping of The Philadelphia Record on June 29, 1938
exif: {}