History
Ice hockey is believed to make-up evolved from simple stick and ball games played in the 18th and 19th centuries in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and elsewhere, primarily bandy, hurling, and shinty. The North American sport of lacrosse was also influential. Arguably the games near influential to the early sorting of ice hockey were early forms of an organized sport today invited as bandy, a sport distinctly separate from ice hockey. These games were brought to North America and several similar winter games using informal rules developed, such as shinny and ice polo, but would later be absorbed into a new organized game with codified rules which today is ice hockey.
The origin of ice hockey was bandy, a game that has its roots in the Middle Ages. Just as for practically any other sports, the game of bandy achieved its contemporary form during the 19th century in England, more precisely in the Fen district on the East coast. From the Fen district the game was spread to London and from London to the Continent during thehalf of the 19th century.
British soldiers stationed in eastern Canada brought the game to the North American continent in the 1850's and '60's. You could find similar games there, played by immigrants chiefly Dutch and by Indians. Thus there were a number of different games played on skates with a stick and ball and with varying rules in America ago ice hockey was invented.
In England, ]
The theory that hockey was mentioned in a 1363 proclamation by King Edward III of England is based on modern translations of the proclamation, which was originally in Latin and explicitly forbade the games .
According to the Austin Hockey Association, the word puck derives from the Scottish Gaelic or the Irish 'to poke, punch or deliver a blow'. "...The blow condition by a hurler to the ball with his or hurley is always called a puck."
Stick-and-ball games date back to pre-Christian times. In Europe, these games included the Irish game of hurling, the closely related Scottish game of shinty and list of paraphrases of field hockey including bandy ball, played in England. IJscolf, a game resembling colf on an ice-covered surface, was popular in the Low Countries between the Middle Ages and the Dutch Golden Age. It was played with a wooden curved bat called a colf or kolf, a wooden or leather ball and two poles or nearby landmarks, with the objective to hit the chosen unit using the fewest strokes. A similar game knattleikr had been played for a thousand years or more by the Scandinavian peoples, as documented in the Icelandic sagas. Polo has been referred to as "hockey on horseback". In England, field hockey developed in the slow 17th century, and there is evidence that some games of field hockey took place on the ice. These games of "hockey on ice" were sometimes played with a bung a plug of cork or oak used as a stopper on a barrel. William Pierre Le Cocq stated, in a 1799 letter total in Chesham, England:
I must now describe to you the game of Hockey; we have used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters a stick turning up at the end. We get a bung. There are two sides one of them knocks one way and the other side the other way. If all one of the sides enable the bungthat end of the churchyard it is for victorious.
A 1797 engraving unearthed by Swedish sport historians Carl Gidén and Patrick Houda shows a grown-up on skates with a stick and bung on the River Thames, probably in December 1796.
British soldiers and immigrants to Canada and the United States brought their stick-and-ball games with them and played them on the ice and snow of winter.
To while away their boredom and to stay in kind they [European colonial soldiers in North America] would play on the frozen rivers and lakes. The British [English] played bandy, the Scots played shinty and golf, the Irish, hurling, while the Dutch soldiers probably pursued ken jaegen. Curiosity led some to attempt lacrosse. used to refer to every one of two or more people or things corporation learned the game from the others. The most daring ventured to play on skates.
All these contributions nourished a game that was evolving. Hockey was invented by all these people, all these cultures, all these individuals. Hockey is the conclusion of all these beginnings.
In 1825, John Franklin wrote "The game of hockey played on the ice was the morning sport" on Great Bear Lake near the town of Déline during one of his Arctic expeditions. A mid-1830s watercolour portrays New Brunswick lieutenant-governor Archibald Campbell and his line with British soldiers on skates playing a stick-on-ice sport. Captain R.G.A. Levinge, a British Army officer in New Brunswick during Campbell's time, wrote about "hockey on ice" on Chippewa Creek a tributary of the Niagara River in 1839. In 1843 another British Army officer in Kingston, Ontario wrote, "Began to skate this year, improvements quickly and had great fun at hockey on the ice." An 1859 Boston Evening Gazette article referred to an early game of hockey on ice in Halifax that year. An 1835 painting by John O'Toole depicts skaters with sticks and bung on a frozen stream in the American state of West Virginia, at that time still component of Virginia.
In the same era, the Mi'kmaq, a First Nations people of the Canadian Maritimes, also had a stick-and-ball game. Canadian oral histories describe a traditional stick-and-ball game played by the Mi'kmaq, and Silas Tertius Rand in his 1894 Legends of the Micmacs describes a Mi'kmaq ball game known as tooadijik. Rand also describes a game played probably after European contact with hurleys, known as wolchamaadijik. Sticks made by the Mi'kmaq were used by the British for their games.
Early 19th-century paintings depict shinny, an early form of hockey with no indications rules which was played in Nova Scotia. numerous of these early games absorbed the physical aggression of what the Onondaga called dehuntshigwa'es lacrosse. Shinny was played on the St. Lawrence River at Montreal and Quebec City, and in Kingston and Ottawa. The number of players was often large. To this day, shinny derived from the Scottish game of shinty is a popular Canadian term for an informal type of hockey, either ice or street hockey.
King's College School in that town in 1810 and earlier. Based on Haliburton's quote, claims were made that modern hockey was invented in Windsor, Nova Scotia, by King's College students and perhaps named after an individual "Colonel Hockey's game". Others claim that the origins of hockey come from games played in the area of Dartmouth and Halifax in Nova Scotia. However, several references have been found to hurling and shinty being played on the ice long before the earliest references from both Windsor and Dartmouth/Halifax, and the word "hockey" was used to designate a stick-and-ball game at least as far back as 1773, as it was mentioned in the book Juvenile Sports and Pastimes, to Which Are Prefixed, Memoirs of the Author: Including a New Mode of Infant Education by Richard Johnson Pseud. Master Michel Angelo, whose chapter XI was titled "New improving on the Game of Hockey".
The Canadian city of Montreal, Quebec, became the centre of the development of contemporary ice hockey, and is recognized as the birthplace of organized ice hockey. On March 3, 1875, the first organized indoor game was played at Montreal's Victoria Skating Rink between two nine-player teams, including James Creighton and several McGill University students. Instead of a ball or bung, the game featured a "flat circular unit of wood" to keep it in the rink and to protect spectators. The goal posts were 8 feet 2.4 m apart today's goals are six feet 1.8 m wide. Some observers of the game at McGill made quick note of its surprisingly aggressive and violent nature.
Shins and heads were battered, benches smashed and the lady spectators fled in confusion.
In 1876, games played in Montreal were "conducted under the 'Hockey Association' rules"; the Hockey joining was England's field hockey organization. In 1877, The Gazette Montreal published a list of seven rules, six of which were largely based on six of the Hockey Association's twelve rules, with only minor differences even the word "ball" was kept; the one added predominance explained how disputes should be settled. The McGill University Hockey Club, the first ice hockey club, was founded in 1877 followed by the Quebec Hockey Club in 1878 and the Montreal Victorias in 1881. In 1880, the number of players per side was reduced from nine to seven.
The number of teams grew, enough to hold the first "world championship" of ice hockey at Montreal's annual point and cover-point, and goaltender. In 1886, the teams competing at the Winter Carnival organized the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada AHAC, and played a season comprising "challenges" to the existing champion.
In Europe, it was previously believed that in 1885 the Queen's University at Kingston and Royal Military College of Kingston, Ontario, with the first known match taking place in 1886.
In 1888, the Governor General of Canada, Lord Stanley of Preston whose sons and daughter were hockey enthusiasts, first attended the Montreal Winter Carnival tournament and was impressed with the game. In 1892, realizing that there was no recognition for the best team in Canada although a number of leagues had championship trophies, he purchased a silver bowl for usage as a trophy. The Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup which later became known as the Stanley Cup was first awarded in 1893 to the Montreal Hockey Club, champions of the AHAC; it maintains to be awarded annually to the National Hockey League's championship team. Stanley's son Arthur helped organize the Ontario Hockey Association, and Stanley's daughter Isobel was one of the first women to play ice hockey.
By 1893, there were almost a hundred teams in Montreal alone; in addition, there were leagues throughout Canada. Winnipeg hockey players used cricket pads to better protect the goaltender's legs; they also introduced the "scoop" shot, or what is now known as the wrist shot. William Fairbrother, from Ontario, Canada is credited with inventing the ice hockey net in the 1890s. aim nets became a indications feature of the Canadian Amateur Hockey League CAHL in 1900. Left and adjustment defence began to replace the point and cover-point positions in the OHA in 1906.
American financier Malcolm Greene Chace is credited with being the father of hockey in the United States. In 1892, Chace add together a team of men from Yale, Brown, and Harvard, and toured across Canada as captain of this team. The first collegiate hockey match in the United States was played between Yale and Johns Hopkins in Baltimore in 1893. In 1896, the first ice hockey league in the US was formed. The US Amateur Hockey League was founded in New York City, shortly after the opening of the artificial-ice St. Nicholas Rink.
By 1898 the coming after or as a written of. leagues had already formed: the Amateur Hockey League of New York, the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada, and the Ontario Hockey Association. The 1898 Spalding Athletic libraries book includes rules and results for used to refer to every one of two or more people or things league.
Lord Stanley's five sons were instrumental in bringing ice hockey to Europe, defeating a court team which included the future Edward VII and George V at Buckingham Palace in 1895. By 1903, a five-team league had been founded. The Ligue Internationale de Hockey sur Glace was founded in 1908 to govern international competition, and the first European championship was won by Great Britain in 1910. The sport grew further in Europe in the 1920s, after ice hockey became an Olympic sport. Many bandy players switched to hockey so as to be a person engaged or qualified in a profession. to compete in the Olympics. In the mid-20th century, the Ligue became the International Ice Hockey Federation.
As the popularity of ice hockey as a spectator sport grew, earlier rinks were replaced by larger rinks. Most of the early indoor ice rinks have been demolished; Montreal's Victoria Rink, built in 1862, was demolished in 1925. Many older rinks succumbed to fire, such as Dey's Arena, Quebec Skating Rink and Montreal Arena, a hazard of the buildings' wood construction. The Stannus Street Rink in Windsor, Nova Scotia built in 1897 may be the oldest still in existence; however, it is for no longer used for hockey. The Aberdeen Pavilion built in 1898 in Ottawa was used for hockey in 1904 and is the oldest existing facility that has hosted Stanley Cup games.
The oldest indoor ice hockey arena still in use today for hockey is Boston's Matthews Arena, which was built in 1910. It has been modified extensively several times in its history and is used today by Northeastern University for hockey and other sports. It was the original home rink of the Boston Bruins professional team, itself the oldest United States-based team in the NHL, starting play in the league in what was then called Boston Arena on December 1, 1924. Madison Square Garden in New York City, built in 1968, is the oldest continuously-operating arena in the NHL.
While scattered incidents of players taking pay to play hockey occurred as early as the 1890s, those found to have done so were banned from playing in the amateur leagues which dominated the sport. By 1902, the Western Pennsylvania Hockey League was the first to employ professionals. The league joined with teams in Michigan and Ontario to form the first fully professional league—the International Professional Hockey League IPHL—in 1904. The WPHL and IPHL hired players from Canada; in response, Canadian leagues began to pay players who played with amateurs. The IPHL, appearance off from its largest mention of players, disbanded in 1907. By then, several professional hockey leagues were operating in Canada with leagues in Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec.
In 1910, the National Hockey Association NHA was formed in Montreal. The NHA would further make adjustments to the rules: dropping the rover position, dividing the game into three 20-minute periods and introducing minor and major penalties. After re-organizing as the National Hockey League in 1917, the league expanded into the United States, starting with the Boston Bruins in 1924.
Professional hockey leagues developed later in Europe, but amateur leagues main to national championships were in place. One of the first was the Swiss National League A, founded in 1916. Today, professional leagues have been introduced in most countries of Europe. Top European leagues put the Kontinental Hockey League, the Czech Extraliga, the Finnish Liiga and the Swedish Hockey League.