History of Ice Hockey

The history of hockey as a game evolved from the Irish field game called Hurley. Hurley was played year round in Ireland on a field with a ball and stick. The game of Hurley was played regularly in the fields of Nova Scotia, Canada back in the early 1800's and when winter came around Hurley was to difficult to play because of the rough frozen ground caused by winter so the game was moved onto the ice of the local lakes. This new game called Hurley on Ice  started at King's College in Windsor, Nova Scotia outside of the capital city of Halifax and became very popular on the East coast of Canada for the first 50 years of the 1800's.

This Hurley on Ice was also called Rickets and Shinny but was eventually called Hockey somewhere in the later part of the 1800's. It is believed that a Royal Canadian Rifles officer stationed in Nova Scotia named "Hockey" for years had his men play this game and Hurley or Shinny was named after him. In the early 1870's an engineer named James Creighton taught his friends at McGill University in Quebec how to play this new game of hockey he learned while living in Nova Scotia. The first organized hockey game that was played inside a rink was set in Montreal in the mid 1870's. James Creighton wrote up new rules called the "Halifax Rules" which had 9 players on each team. Hockey was very popular in Montreal at that time but  James Creighton, by then a lawyer, decided to move on to Ottawa and eventually became the Law Clerk of the Canadian Government Senate. He then started Ottawa's first organized hockey team called the Rideau Hall Rebels in the late 1880's. Also around this same time the first organized amateur hockey league started in Kingston, Ontario and had 4 teams. In the 1900's the invention of the tube skates which eventually evolved into the present day skates and also netting fot the goalie nets was also invented. The number of players allowed on each team went from 9 to 7 (3 forwards, 2 defenseman, 1 rover and 1 goalie). 
The era from the turn of the century to 1917 saw many professional leagues formed like the International Pro Hockey League, National Hockey Association (NHA) and the Pacific Coast League (PCL). All these leagues eventually folded which lead to the creation of the National Hockey League (NHL) in 1917, which is in existence to this day. When the NHL was formed the NHL dropped the rover position which meant 6 hockey players per aside.
Our  associates at Expressively Yours Greetings where you can get a free guest book for your website and here is our associate Expressively Yours Greetings Hockey Guest Book.

Return to All About Hockey Home Page

If your History of Ice Hockey website would like to be listed on this History of Ice Hockey website as a History of Ice Hockey Sponsor that promotes or uses one of our History of Ice Hockey websites pages relating to your History of Ice Hockey websites, please Email Us for details and let us know the exact History of Ice Hockey advertising page of ours you relate to and we send you details. We provide a text link (and description) to your History of Ice Hockey web site page that you provide a reciprocal 2 way text link (and Description) to this History of Ice Hockey web site and our History of Ice Hockey advertising home. NOTE: Your History of Ice Hockey site has to be an associate of our History of Ice Hockey site.