Historically there were no teams in the west. Flying cost was too great for just one or two teams to go it alone, but there are enough farm teams in the west now that it is both financially viable and preferable to have your farm team close by.

I'll never understand teams not having their own AHL affiliates. And how far apart some teams are from their affiliates, although I think that has gotten better in recent years.

Yeah, once they moved a lot of the teams over to the west coast with franchises in Ontario (which I did not know until recently was founded by a couple Canadians and that's why it's named after the Province) and San Jose everyone had their AHL affiliates somewhere in the Eastern US. It was comical in the early 2000s when the Kings, who were one of the most ridiculously injury-prone teams of the era, racked up some serious air miles because their affiliate, the Monarchs, were in frickin' Manchester, New Hampshire.



Let's keep in mind that until the Colorado Eagles made the jump from the ECHL to the AHL, there were more NHL franchises than available AHL affiliates. So it was much more common than you might think.

I have almost zero sympathy for the Canes--they had an affiliate RIGHT THERE in Charlotte and let things go south (though to be fair I believe the Checkers' owner has a bit of a rep himself), then affiliated with a franchise well-known for wanting to do things their own way. I suppose the silver lining is that the Canes aren't really rife with AHL prospects at present.

From what I understand, the Hershey Bears act in a pretty independent manner, but they've been the farm club for the Capitals for many, many years now and that relationship doesn't appear to be problematic at all. The Americans and Sabres butted heads quite a bit until Terry Pegula up and bought the franchise.

One thing I understand about each affiliate--the AHL club has to incorporate the helmets and pants of the parent club, the players aren't allowed to switch. This really screwed the Eagles in Loveland when they proudly came out with blue jerseys, only to find out the Avs abruptly switched from black to blue helmets/pants a couple years back, so they came out (and still look like) Smurfs on skates. But for whatever reason, Hershey and Chicago are exempt from this rule. I can see, from a historical perspective, why the Bears get an exemption, but not the Wolves.