Ice hockey (frequently simply called hockey in countries where it is the most popular form of hockey) is a team sport played on ice, in which skaters use sticks to direct a puck into the opposing team's goal. It is a fast-paced and physical sport. Ice hockey is most popular in areas that are sufficiently cold for natural reliable seasonal ice cover, such as Canada, the northern United States, the Nordic countries (especially Sweden and Finland), Russia, the Baltic States, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. With the advent of indoor artificial ice rinks it has become a year-round pastime in these areas. Ice hockey is one of the four major North American professional sports. Worldwide the National Hockey League (NHL) is the highest level for men and the Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL) and the Western Women's Hockey League (WWHL) are the highest level for women. It is the official national winter sport of Canada, where the game enjoys immense popularity. While only six of the thirty NHL franchises are based in Canada, Canadians make up a slight majority of the league's players.
While there are 66 total members of the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF), 162 of 177 medals at the IIHF World Championships have been taken by seven nations: Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden and the United States. Of the 63 medals awarded in men's competition at the Olympic level from 1920 on, only six did not go to the one of those countries. All nine Olympic and 27 IIHF World Women Championships medals have gone to one of those seven countries.
History
From oral histories, there is evidence of a tradition of an ancient hockey-like game played among the Mi'kmaq First Nation in Eastern Canada. In Legends of the Micmacs, (1894) Silas T. Rand, describes a Mi'kmaq ball game, which the people called tooadijik. Rand also describes a game that was played (likely after European contact) with hurleys, called wolchamaadijik. European immigrants brought various versions of hockey-like games to Canada, such as the Irish sport of hurling, the closely related Scottish sport of shinty, and versions of field hockey played in England. Where necessary, these seem to have been adapted for icy conditions. Early paintings show "shinney", an early form of hockey with no standard rules, being played in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Thomas Chandler Haliburton, in The Attache: Second Series , published in 1844, reminisced about boys from King's College School in Windsor, Nova Scotia, playing "hurly on the long pond on the ice" when he was a student there, no later than 1810. To this day, shinny (or shinney) (derived from Shinty) is a popular Canadian term for an informal type of hockey, either on ice or as street hockey. These early games may have also absorbed the physically aggressive aspects of what the Mi'kmaq in Nova Scotia, called dehuntshigwa'es (lacrosse).
In 1825 Sir John Franklin wrote that "The game of hockey played on the ice was the morning sport" while on Great Bear Lake during one of his Arctic expeditions. In 1843 a British Army officer in Kingston, Ontario in Canada, wrote "Began to skate this year, improved quickly and had great fun at hockey on the ice. " An article in the Boston Evening Gazette, in 1859, makes reference to an early game of hockey on ice occurring in Halifax in that year.
The first recorded hockey games were played by British soldiers stationed in Kingston and Halifax during the mid-1850 s. In the 1870 s, the first known set of ice hockey rules were drawn up by students at Montreal's McGill University. These rules established the number of players per side to 9 and replaced the ball with a wood puck.
Based on Haliburton's writings, there have been claims that modern ice hockey originated in Windsor, Nova Scotia in Canada, and was named after an individual, as in 'Colonel Hockey's game'. Proponents of this theory claim that the surname Hockey exists in the district surrounding Windsor. In 1943, the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association declared Kingston the birthplace of hockey, based on a recorded 1886 game played between students of Queen's University and the Royal Military College of Canada.
The Society for International Hockey Research has had an "origins of hockey" committee studying this debate since 2001 and they defined hockey as: "a game played on an ice rink in which two opposing teams of skaters, using curved sticks, try to drive a small disc, ball or block into or through the opposite goals. " The committee found evidence of stick and ball games played on ice on skates in Europe in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, and viewed these activities as being more indicative of a hockey-like game than Haliburton’s reference.
They found no evidence in the Windsor position of a connection from whatever form of hockey might have been played at Long Pond to the game played elsewhere and to modern hockey. The committee viewed as conjecture the assertion that King’s schoolboys introduced the game to Halifax. They noted that the assertion that hockey was not played outside Nova Scotia until 1865 overlooks diary evidence of shinny and hockey being played at Kingston in the 1840 s. The committee concluded that Dr. Vaughan and the Windsor Hockey Heritage Society had not offered credible evidence that Windsor, Nova Scotia, is the birthplace of hockey.
The committee offered no opinion on the birth date or birthplace of hockey, but took note of a game at Montreal’s Victoria Skating Rink on March 3, 1875. This is the earliest eyewitness account known to the committee of a specific game of hockey in a specific place at a specific time, and with a recorded score, between two identified teams.
According to the Society for International Hockey Research, the word puck is derived from the Scottish and Gaelic word "puc" or the Irish word "poc", meaning to poke, punch or deliver a blow. This definition is explained in a book published in 1910 entitled "English as we Speak it in Ireland" by P. W. Joyce. It defines the word puck as "... The blow given by a hurler to the ball with his caman or hurley is always called a puck".
Foundation of modern hockey
While the game's origins may lie elsewhere, Montreal is at the center of the development of the modern sport of ice hockey. On March 3, 1875 the first organized indoor game was played at Montreal's Victoria Skating Rink between two sides of nine-player teams including James Creighton and several McGill University students. This game featured the use of a puck to keep it within the rink; the goals were goal posts 6 feet apart, and the game was 60 min.
In 1877, several McGill students, including Creighton, Henry Joseph, Richard F. Smith, W. F. Robertson, and W. L. Murray codified seven ice hockey rules, based on the rules of field hockey. The first ice hockey club, McGill University Hockey Club, was founded in 1877 followed by the Montreal Victorias, organized in 1881.
The game became so popular that the first "world championship" of ice hockey was featured in Montreal's annual Winter Carnival in 1883 and the McGill team captured the "Carnival Cup". The number of players per side was reduced to seven, and the games now organized into thirty-minute halves. The positions were now named with left and right wing, centre, rover, point and cover point, and goalkeeper. In 1885, the Montreal City Hockey League was established. In 1886, the teams which competed at the Winter Carnival would organize the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada(AHAC) league and play a regular season composed of 'challenges' to the existing champion.
In Europe, it is believed that in 1885 the Oxford University Ice Hockey Club was formed to play the first Ice Hockey Varsity Match against traditional rival Cambridge in St. Moritz, Switzerland, although this is undocumented. This match was won by the Oxford Dark Blues, 6-0. The first photographs and team lists date from 1895. This continues to be the oldest hockey rivalry in history.
In 1888, the new Governor General of Canada, Lord Stanley of Preston, whose sons and daughter became hockey enthusiasts, attended the Montreal Winter Carnival tournament and was impressed with the hockey spectacle. In 1892, recognizing that there was no recognition for the best team in all of Canada (various leagues had championship trophies), he purchased a decorative bowl for use as a trophy. The Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup, which later became more famously known as the Stanley Cup, was first awarded in 1893 to the Montreal HC, champions of the AHAC. It continues to be awarded today 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, and leagues throughout Canada. Winnipeg hockey players had incorporated cricket pads to better protect the goalten
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