History of Ice Hockey
#)Hockey is considered as one of the earliest stick-and-ball games.
#)Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, Romans, and Arabs played this form of the sport.
#)There is another game called Hurling, which similar to hockey, and is known to have been played during the 1st millennium bc in Ireland, and similar kind of sports were also adopted by other Europeans during the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century).
#)Ice hockey was significantly influenced by lacrosse, a stick-and-ball game which was developed by the native North Americans.
#)The name hockey is adapted by the English from a French word calledhoquet which means shepherd’s crook.
#)The name "ice Hockey"was first given to the sport in the 18th century but it was not in common usage until the 19th century.
#)The British soldiers who were on duty in Canada devised modern ice hockey in the mid-1850s.
#)The rules for the game was set by the students of McGill University in Montréal, Québec, Canada during the year 1897 and several amateur clubs and leagues were established in Canada during the 1880s.
#)Ice hockey became an extremely popular game at northern U.S. colleges during late 1800s, and by the start of the 20th century the sport began to spread to Britain and other european countries.
#)However,the first professional league was established in the year 1904 in Northern Michigan.
#)This was a four-team league which included one club from Canada, and naturally it was named as the International Hockey League.
#)After that several leagues followed this, and this also includes the first significant Canadian professional league, the National Hockey Association (NHA), which began play in the year 1909.
#)The Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) was founded in the year 1911.
#)The NHA folded following the 1916-17 season, but its strongest teams then formed the NHL and competed in the year 1917-18 season.
#)The NHL remained as a four-team Canadian league until the 1924-25 season, when a team from Boston ,which became the first U.S. club to join this league.
#)By 1926, there were six U.S. teams in a ten-team NHL competition with 4 Canadian team.
#)During this early period, players such as forward Howie Morenz of the Montréal Canadiens, defenseman Eddie Shore of the Boston Bruins, and forward King Clancy of the Toronto Maple Leafs drew crowds as the NHL’s first great stars.
#)Several organizers were instrumental in building the NHL during its early days.
#)The most prominent included Frank Calder, the first NHL president; Conn Smythe, who helped build and guide Toronto’s franchise; and Jack Adams, a coach and general manager in Detroit from 1927 through 1962.
#)World War II (1939-1945) drained the league of players, and by 1942 the NHL consisted only six teams—the Bruins, the Detroit Red Wings, the Chicago Blackhawks, the Canadiens, the New York Rangers, and the Maple Leafs.
#)But after the war the six-team NHL era saw the rise of several dynasties.
#)Forward Gordie Howe and goaltender Terry Sawchuk were stars on the Red Wings, who won four Stanley Cup championships between the year 1950 and 1955.
#)The Canadians, spearheaded by forward Maurice Richard, played in the Stanley Cup Finals each year from 1951 through 1960, and they won in 1953 and from 1956 to 1960.
#)Hockey gained popularity in the 1960s, and late in the decade the NHL began to expand.
#)The league added ten teams from 1967 to 1972.
#)Hockey’s strength as a spectator sport was also shown by the creation in 1971 of the World Hockey Association (WHA), a rival professional league to the NHL.
#)In 1972 summer, the sport’s popularity received another boost with an eight-game competition between Canada’s best professionals and the top players from the USSR’s Red Army team.
#)The heavily favored Canadians, stunned by the Soviets’ prowess, barely edged the Red Army team, 4 games to 3 (with 1 tie).
#)The series came down to the last game, which the Canadians won on a last-minute goal scored by Paul Henderson, who remains a national hero.
#)A fierce rivalry was born, and a subsequent series took place in 1974
#)Other games between Soviet teams and NHL clubs later in the decade gave more attention to international ice hockey and there were million of spectators.
#)At the same time, the NHL also continued to thrive.
#)Notable standouts of the period included forward Bobby Hull, who scored 610 NHL goals and another 303 in the WHA; Bobby Orr, an innovative defenseman who played chiefly with the Boston Bruins; and Vladislav Tretiak, a Russian goaltender who in 1989 became the first non-North American to be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
#)The merger of the WHA and the NHL in 1979 and the entry of 18-year-old center Wayne Gretzky into professional play the same year marked the beginning of unprecedented popularity for ice hockey. Gretzky, who came to be called “The Great One,” dominated the league over the next 15 years with a streak of unprecedented scoring accomplishments.
#)Other powerful scorers such as centers Mario Lemieux and Mark Messier, right wing Brett Hull, and defenseman Paul Coffey were regarded as one of the best hockey players of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
#)The 1980 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York, also helped spark a boom in ice hockey in the United States where the unexpected happen.
#)During the Games the U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team, a collection of college and minor-league players,and th ey won the Gold Medal and most importantly they beat the powerful USSR team .
#)"MIRACLE" is the english film ,which shows the story how the USA team with a collection of college students went to an extent of beating the USSR team and win the gold medal.
#)The victory also sparked the formation of several new minor leagues and teams in the United States,and also the expansion by the NHL into new American markets.
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