Ottawa Hockey Club

Library and Archives Canada

How did hockey get started? Where did that little puck come from? And those funky curved sticks?

Daniel Webster's definition, circa 1883, of hockey reads as follows: "A game in which two parties of players, armed with sticks or clubs, curved or hooked at the end, attempt to drive any small object (as a ball or a bit of wood) towards opposite goals."

Ice hockey is an adaptation of the Native American game of lacrosse, where a small solid rubber ball and a long-handled racquet called a crosse or lacrosse stick. (Which, to me, resembles people running around a field trying to catch butterflies with a butterfly net.)  In fact, many of the first rules were borrowed directly from the lacrosse, moving from ground to ice.

So, you can say that hockey is a true North American tradition. It's precurser, lacrosse, originated with the Native Americans of the United States and Canada, mainly among the Huron and Iroquois Tribes. In many societies/tribes, the ball sport was often part of religious ritual, played to resolve conflicts, heal the sick, develop strong, virile men and prepare for war. Legend tells of games with more than 100 players from different tribes taking turns to play. Perhaps that is where the fighting in hockey originated too?

Of course, the Native Americans had to get the idea for lacrosse somewhere. Amusements bearing some resemblance to hockey are known to have taken place in Europe as early as the sixteenth century, or even earlier. For example, a painting by Pietr Bruegel (the elder) entitled "Hunters in the Snow" (circa 1565), depicts skaters carrying curved sticks. One of these figures is about to bring his stick in contact with a small object on the ice.

The earliest skate blades were fashioned from animal bones, but it is known from the journals of Olaus Magnus, the last Catholic Archbishop of Sweden, that polished iron blades were used in the Gulf of Bothnia area in the 1500s.

Some hockey history enthusiasts trace the game's beginning to Mesopotamia, in the third millennium B.C. These historians point to Tablet XII of the Gilgamesh epic (an ancient text from the area that is now Iraq) that shows men employing curved sticks to manipulate a wooden ring over a dirt surface.

To trace the history of true ice hockey, we must travel north. For you Texans out there, that's further north than the Red River. In recent years, the name of Windsor, Nova Scotia, has come to the forefront as hockey's birthplace. Proponents point to a passage in Thomas Chandler Haliburton's 1843 novel, The Attaché; or Sam Slick in England, as evidence of hocky's American roots. Sam, a fast-talking Connecticut Yankee, mocks the reminiscences he imagines his traveling companion will have of his childhood at King's Collegiate in Windsor, including "hurly on the long pond on the ice."

Documentation shows that men under Arctic explorer John Franklin's command both skated and played hockey on a small lake beside Great Bear Lake on October 25, 1825. It is not known whether they were skating while playing "hockey" or were engaging in two separate activities at different times during the day. This is a crucial point because the prevailing view is that for an activity to be called ice hockey, participants must be on blades.

The International Ice Hockey Federation has endorsed a longstanding Montréal claim. It is based on documented evidence, in newspapers, of a specific game between two teams of identified members and a recorded score. The match was played at the city's Victoria Rink on March 3, 1875. No earlier descriptions of an actual game of hockey with a recorded score have ever been found. It ended, incidentally, in a brawl!

The first formal game was recorded in Kingston, Ontario, in 1855. Twenty years later, students of Montreal's McGill University (credited for much of the game's early development), imposed a code of conduct familiarly known as the McGill Rules. Many of those same principles govern the game today.

In 1885, Canada's first national hockey association was formed, with teams quickly influencing their neighbors to the south. By 1896, teams were competing in the New York area, with the first game between the U.S. and Canada played by 1899.

Before then, teams competed in tournaments and infrequent challenge contests that prevailed in the Canadian sports world at the time. In 1887, four clubs from Montreal, the Montreals, the Crystals, the Victorias, McGill University, as well as Ottawa HC formed the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada (AHAC) and developed a structured schedule. Lord Stanley donated the Stanley Cup and appointed Sheriff John Sweetland and Philip Dansken Ross as its trustees; they chose to award it to the best team in the AHAC, or to any pre-approved team that won it in a challenge. Since the Cup carried an air of nobility, its prestige greatly benefited the AHAC.

The coordination and regularized schedule that the AHAC brought helped commercialize amateur ice hockey, which ran against the spirit of the prevailing amateur ethic. As the importance of winning grew, AHAC clubs began recruiting players from outside, and the disparity in skill between teams of the AHAC and those of other leagues became clearer. Since team owners in the AHAC wanted to defend the Stanley Cup and maintain the organization's honor, and rink owners wanted senior hockey as their marquee attraction, AHAC clubs became increasingly reluctant about admitting new teams into the league and the senior series.

When the relatively weak Ottawa Capitals joined in 1898, the five original clubs withdrew from the AHAC to form the new Canadian Amateur Hockey League (CAHL). In 1903, four new teams created the Federal Amateur Hockey League (FAHL), and in 1904, the International Hockey League (IHL), based around Lake Michigan, was created as the first fully professional league. In recruiting players, the IHL caused an "Athletic War" that drained amateur clubs of top players, most noticeably in the Ontario Hockey Association (OHA).

By the 1905–06 season, several of the FAHL and CAHL markets were overcrowded; for example, Montreal had seven clubs. To solve the problem, the leagues merged into the new Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association (ECAHA), which kept four of the Montreal clubs. The new league mixed paid and amateur players in its rosters, which led to the demise of the IHL. With the IHL gone, teams from Toronto, Berlin (now Kitchener), Brantford, and Guelph filled the void with the Ontario Professional Hockey League (OPHL). Bidding wars for players led many ECAHA teams to lose money, and before the 1907–08 season, the Montreal Victorias and the Montreal HC left. The ECAHA dropped "Amateur" from its name for the 1909 season, and on November 25, it folded. Ottawa HC, Quebec HC, and the Montreal Shamrocks founded the Canadian Hockey Association (CHA), and the league later admitted the Montreal Le National and All-Montreal HC. Rejected CHA applicants formed the National Hockey Association (NHA).

When compared to the CHA, the geographical distances between NHA teams were much greater; however, the NHA's financial backers were more notable businessmen. These businessmen applied financial principles similar to those of early baseball, and the leagues quickly entered a bitter bidding war over players. In particular, after being rejected from the CHA, Renfrew aggressively pursued any players that the CHA's Ottawa club wanted. Montreal became a notable battleground as the NHA established two franchises, including the modern-day Montreal Canadiens. With its significantly wealthier backers, the NHA easily recruited the top players, leaving the CHA teams, except Ottawa, relatively mediocre. Ottawa regularly trounced its opponents, and league attendance and interest dropped. The CHA's final season lasted eight games, and the league folded in 1910 as its Ottawa and Montreal clubs joined the NHA.

The first professional league, called the National Hockey Association, formed in 1909. The four original teams from that league were among the first to play under the auspices of the new NHL in 1917.

What is hockey?

The orgins of hockey is still debated. To help settle the debate, one must answer the question "what is hockey?" To aid followers of the US' and Canada's national winter sport in assessing claims, the Society for International Hockey Research has issued a definition meant to accommodate early forms of the activity: "Hockey is 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."

They should add, and must contain at least one fight, brawl, or feral hugging.