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Ice Hockey
The history of Ice hockey
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| The history of Ice Hockey |
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Ice hockey
What is Hockey?
Hockey has been played for longer than any of us has been alive, we can't tell you exactly when it was invented, or by who, because no one knows for sure. We do have some idea of how it got started, however, and we can describe the ways the game has grown and changed over the years. Once a relatively obscure recreation for people who lived in the north country, hockey is now played all over the world and has become one of the most popular winter sports. Frankly, we don't know what we'd do without it, and millions of other people feel the same way.
The Origins of Hockey
Most historians place the roots of hockey in the chilly climes of northern Europe, specifically Great Britain and France, where field hockey was a popular summer sport more than 500 years ago. When the ponds and lakes froze in winter, it was not unusual for the athletes who fancied that sport to play a version of it on ice.
An ice game known as kolven was popular in Holland in the 17th century, and later on the game really took hold in England. A number of writers thought this game should be forbidden because it was so disruptive to people out for a leisurely winter skate.
Hockey Reaches North America
Not surprisingly, the earliest North American games were played in Canada. British soldiers stationed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, were reported to have organized contests on frozen ponds in and around that city in the 1870s, and about that same time in Montreal students from McGill University began facing off against each other in a downtown ice rink. The continent's first hockey league was said to have been launched in Kingston, Ontario, in 1885, and it included four teams.
Hockey became so popular that games were soon being played on a regular basis between clubs from Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. The English Governor General of Canada, Lord Stanley of Preston, was so impressed that in 1892 he bought a silver bowl with an interior gold finish and decreed that it be given each year to the best amateur team in Canada. That trophy, of course, has come to be known as the Stanley Cup and is awarded today to the franchise that wins the National Hockey League playoffs.
Lord Stanley of PrestonWhen hockey was first played in Canada, the teams had nine men per side. But by the time the Stanley Cup was introduced, it was a seven-man game. The change came about accidentally in the late 1880s after a club playing in the Montreal Winter Carnival showed up two men short, and its opponent agreed to drop the same number of players on its team to even the match. In time, players began to prefer the smaller squad, and it wasn't long before that number became the standard for the sport. Each team featured one goaltender, three forwards, two defensemen, and a rover, who had the option of moving up ice on the attack or falling back to defend his goal.
The Rise of Professional Hockey
Hockey was still amateur until 1904, when the first league was created - oddly enough in the United States. Known as the International Pro Hockey League, it was based in the iron-mining region of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. That ended three years later, in 1907. An even bigger league was formed in 1910 called the National Hockey Association . Soon after that the Pacific Coast League was formed. In 1914, a championship series was arranged between the two leagues. The winner would get the cup of Lord Stanley. The first World War stopped the entire hockey establishment and the men running the NHA stopped the league all together.
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