National League (Wembley Lions). The schedule for the competition was a six-game double round-robin tournament from April 17 to 24, followed by a best-of-three game final series between the top two teams. CAHA representative W. A. Hewitt announced the shortening of the series due to poor attendance. The game between Hershey and Winnipeg was cancelled as both teams went home early, with the tournament being completed by a best-of-three series between Sudbury and Wembley, which Sudbury won on a sudden death overtime goal by George Hastie in the third game. The Bears join the IAHL 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 playoffs by the New York Rangers' top farm team, the Philadelphia Ramblers, three-games-to-two. Defenseman Herb Kalbfleisch became the first Hershey player to