Taking a Look at Ice Hockey

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Ice Hockey is a fast-paced physical team sport played on ice. In hockey skaters use hockey sticks to hit a hard rubber puck into the opponents net. Hockey is popular in North America, Europe, and Russia. Hockey is an official winter Olympic sport and is the national winter sport in Canada. Hockey is nicknamed “the fastest sport on earth.” There are many theories of where and how hockey was originated. But modern day hockey is believed to originate from the game of field hockey which was first played in ancient Greece, Egypt and Persia. And over time the game spread north to Europe and then west to the America’s, where the Native Americans were already playing a stick-and-ball game that the French called lacrosse. Meanwhile, in Europe ice skating got really popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, and games started being played on ice including a Dutch version of golf and an on-ice version of hurling, an Irish stick-and-ball game. Early 19th century paintings show an early form of hockey with no standard rules that was played in Nova Scotia called shinney. Today shinney is a popular Canadian term for an informal type of hockey. Around the mid 1800’s the Halifax Rules were made which are considered the first ever standardized rules of ice hockey. In the early 1870’s James G. Creighton, from Nova Scotia, took the rules to Montreal, Canada where they were used in the first organized ice hockey game. On March 3, 1875 the first organized game of hockey was played between Creighton and McGill University students against Fred Torrence's Victoria team at Victoria Skating Rink in Montreal. In 1877 Creighton published the first seven rules of hockey, and McGill University in Montreal formed the first organized ice hockey team. By 1883, hocke... ... middle of paper ... ...ey 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 IPHL hired players from Canada and in response; Canadian leagues began to pay players. The IPHL, cut off from its largest source of players, disbanded in 1907. In 1910 the National Hockey Association (NHA) was formed in Montreal. The NHA refined the rules the re-organized as the National Hockey League (NHL) in 1917, and in 1924 the NHL expanded to the U.S. with the founding of the Boston Bruins. Works Cited IIHF. History. n.d. 18 Decmeber 2013. McKinley, Michael. Hockey: A People's History. McClelland & Stewart, 2009. The People History Where People Memories and History Join . Ice Hockey Origins, Growth and Changes in the Game. n.d. 18 December 2013.

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