Canadian-American Hockey League

The Canadian-American Hockey League, popularly known as the Can-Am League, was a professional ice hockey league that operated from 1926 to 1936. It was a direct ancestor of the American Hockey League.

For its first ten years the Can-Am's membership varied between five and six teams. When Boston dropped out after the 1935–36 season thus reducing the league to just four active teams (Philadelphia, Providence, Springfield, and New Haven), however, the C-AHL joined with four teams from the International Hockey League (Syracuse, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland) and operated as a new but temporary "circuit of mutual convenience" styled as the "International-American Hockey League." In this form the two leagues played an interlocking schedule for the next two years with the Can-Am clubs serving as the I-AHL's Eastern Division and the IHL as its Western Division, although Buffalo was forced to drop out early in the 1936–37 season owing to the roof of its arena having collapsed in a snowstorm.

At a meeting held in New York City on June 28, 1938, the two leagues formally merged into a unified eight-team circuit operating under the I-AHL name with the addition of the EAHL's then three-time defending champion Hershey Bears which was awarded an I-AHL franchise that day to replace the defunct Buffalo club. The league changed its name to the current AHL in 1940.

Two current AHL franchises have roots in the old Can-Am. The Connecticut Whale is descended from the old Providence Reds franchise, which moved to Binghamton, New York in 1977 before moving to Hartford in 1997. The Peoria Rivermen are the former Springfield Indians franchise that had moved to Worcester, Massachusetts in 1994 before relocating to Peoria in 2005.