During St. Nicholas Hockey Club's inaugural season in the league, in 1896–97, the team was represented by several notable American tennis players, among them William Larned, Henry Slocum, Malcolm Chace and Robert Wrenn.

Canadian middle-distance runner and Olympic gold medalist George Orton played for the Quaker City Hockey Club in 1900–01, as did 1906 US Open tennis champion William Clothier.

A great bulk of the players in the AAHL came from different Ivy League schools such as Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and Yale.

Among them were United States Senator Leverett Saltonstall and prominent businessman Harold Stanley.

The league also had many Canadian players on its teams, among them Tom "Attie" Howard, George Orton, Bob Wall, Bill Dobby, Artie Liffiton and Riley Castleman.