Syracuse Crunch Transform Into Stars, Host Cleveland Monsters March 21

The Syracuse Crunch will shed their familiar blue and green for a night, stepping back nearly a century when they host the Cleveland Monsters on Saturday, March 21 at 7 p.m. inside Upstate Medical University Arena. The team will wear specialty jerseys as the Syracuse Stars, resurrecting a name that first brought professional hockey to Central New York when the Stars joined the old International Hockey League in 1930 and claimed the first-ever Calder Cup in 1937.

Cleveland will match the moment. The Monsters will simultaneously transform into the Cleveland Barons, donning special throwback jerseys honoring an AHL franchise that operated from the 1930s through the 1960s. Both rebrands are anchored in the 2025-26 season's central theme: the American Hockey League's 90th anniversary celebration.

The AHL's footprint in professional hockey runs deep. In operation since 1936, the league serves as the top development pipeline for players, coaches, managers, executives, broadcasters, and staff connected to all 32 NHL teams. Nearly 90 percent of today's NHL players are AHL graduates, and more than 100 honored members of the Hockey Hall of Fame spent time in the league during their careers.

For Syracuse specifically, that history stretches across eight different professional teams and hundreds of individuals who built what AHL writer Katie Hamlin described as a genuine home for the sport in Central New York. "From the Syracuse Stars, to the filming of Slap Shot, and now to the Syracuse Crunch in their 31st season, the city of Syracuse holds a rich hockey history," Hamlin wrote for AHL On The Beat.

That continuity was formally recognized on November 5, 2024, when the Crunch announced the creation of the Syracuse Hockey Hall of Fame. The inaugural class, inducted on November 23, 2024, included Crunch owner Howard Dolgon, Onondaga County Deputy County Executive Ed Kochian, Crunch general partner Alan Taylor, former Crunch forward Scott Walker, and Syracuse Blazers forward Brian Elwell.

Elwell's story threads directly through the transformation from Stars to Crunch. He arrived in Syracuse in 1968 to play for the Eastern Hockey League's Blazers, spending four years and 233 games with the team and becoming one of the most popular players in franchise history. After retiring and settling in the Syracuse area, he channeled that loyalty into action, taking a lead role in the "Ice the Future" effort to attract an AHL team back to the city and becoming an integral part of bringing the Crunch to town.

Elwell passed away on March 20, 2023. His daughter, Ashley Dastyck, accepted his Hall of Fame induction in his honor. "If the Hall of Fame wall means anything," Hamlin wrote, "it means people who cared about being here in Syracuse and cared about being a Syracuse Crunch and were passionate about it."

The Tampa Bay Lightning's AHL affiliate enters the March 21 game carrying 31 seasons of Crunch history behind them. For one night, they carry nearly a century more.