People often inquire about Hockey history, but not often do people learn about the history of the pieces that make a sport what it is. Most of you know who invented hockey, or even where it was originated, but do you ever stop and think about the puck?

The history of the word puck can be traced back to pouke in the 1300’s with the Old English meaning of the word devil and later the verb to poke. In Shakespeare’s Mr. Robin Goodfellow, the puck was a mischievous witty spirit in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” who was constantly getting into trouble, by “poking people the wrong way” if you may. So the word “puck” we know now literally came from the old English word to poke.

The first hockey pucks were made from wood and cut from the branches of trees. Before the modern day puck was invented in 1860, hockey players had been using a Hurley ball, which was uncontrollable and cumbersome on the ice due to it bouncing all over the ice. Also man y times a block of wood was used when the Hurley ball was not available, this alone brought about its own set of issues. However depending on your source of information some would claim that in 1875, students at Boston University sliced a rubber ball in half to make a puck. Another version places its origination in Montreal Quebec, Canada. Victoria Rink owner of one of the first indoor ice rinks (where the terminology originates) allegedly sliced a rubber ball in half. In any case, the first “recorded” use of a flat disk was in Montreal in March 1875.

In the early years of hockey history, pucks were made by gluing two pieces of rubber together many times made from recycled tires. Because of the way they were constructed, the pucks could split when they hit the goal post. During the 1931 and 1932 seasons, a puck with sloped, beveled edges was used. Midway through the season complaints by players and teams had escalated so, that it led to the return of the original design of the puck. Though there was really no official professional puck until the 1990-1991 season, the basic design from the early 1900s remained basically the same. Today hockey pucks are flat, solid, black disk shaped objects made from vulcanized rubber. Regulation National Hockey League pucks are black and are 3 inches in diameter, 1 inch thick and weighing 5 or 6 ounces. On the edges a series of diamond shape slightly raised bumps have been molded to it. The diamonds give a taped hockey stick something to grip on to when the puck is shot. The design of NHL regulation pucks were regularized in 1940 by Art Ross. Although pucks remained basically the same from the way they were originally designed, Ross’s innovations made a puck that was easy to manufacture and acted with better consistency when used in play.

Hockey is one of the few sports that through the years have not deviated much from its original form thus making it still to this day one of the few rare pure sports. Keep hockey history alive and well!

~Zain on the East Coast

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When you think about how much you enjoy hockey, what, do you suppose, keeps you enthralled? Many people admire the talent and skill of the players, while others appreciate a good fight now and then. For most, however, it’s the fast-paced action that keeps their eyes glued to the game.

This year, over 5 million people in the US tuned in to watch the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Would you have tuned in if ten guys politely passed the puck around, only to score when the goalie wasn’t paying attention? Of course not! Which is why you can thank The Colored Hockey League (CHL) for evolving the primitive “gentleman’s game” of hockey.

Despite whatever you want to think about the sport, hockey was not always a game of speed and skill. Hockey was, simply put, a pastime of men.

The year was 1895 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a year when many white people believed Africans were intolerant to cold and supposedly hadn’t the ankles to support themselves on ice skates. Considering many of the African players had fathers and grandfathers who literally walked to Nova Scotia from Colonial America, it’s probably safe to assume both myths can be debunked.

Originally, these African-Canadians formed clubs which met for games by formal invitation to one another only. In 1900, they formed the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes for the three areas of Canada these clubs represented: Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick.

The CHL was composed of approximately 400 players, primarily Baptist ministers and church laymen, who were comparable to any of the contemporary players in Canada. They defied the stereotypical myths that oppressed them and molded the game of hockey into the stark competitive sport it is today.

You can thank Eddie Martin, who is the grandfather of the slap shot. Without it, Chris Kelly couldn’t have scored the game-winning goal against the Washington capitals during the playoff opener this year!

Likewise, goalies everywhere can give applause to the CHL, which first allowed them to cover the puck with their feet.

Unfortunately, these and other game-changing contributions are often conveniently ignored and overlooked. Occasionally, the CHL’s ideas were flat out stolen by fellow white hockey players of the time.

It was this kind of mentality which led to the eventual demise of the Colored Hockey League. Due to racism and discrimination against the African-Canadians, largely because of fear they were gaining power through their sport, the CHL was quickly dissolved in 1925.

-Dan “The Wisconsin Hockey Fan”

Every hockey fan can tell the story of his or her favorite game. Some will go so far as to learn all the stats of their all-time favorite player or even team. And some go beyond all normal human capabilities and remember every detail about anything hockey.

Looking at air hockey history, it’s not surprising that the game was conceived and popularized by a die-hard hockey fan. In 1969, the engineering of the game and the function of the table began with three employees of the Brunswick Company, a popular pool table manufacturer. Phil Crossman, Bob Kenrick, and Brad Baldwin worked to create a friction-less designed game table, but the design was left dormant because, so far, the friction-less table didn’t seem to hold any value in gaming.

The game of air hockey, as we know it today, was not created until 1972. Bob Lemieux, another employee of Brunswick and an avid hockey fan, conceptualized a game using two mallets to knock the flattened disks into the small slits on either far-side of the table. The air kept the disks perpetually moving and offered similar effects of a hockey puck on ice. He then created detectors in the slits that recorded when a goal was scored. Air hockey was born.The original air hockey table patent references Lemieux, as well as, Kenrick and Crossman as creators of the game.

Air Hockey History: Popularizing the Game

The game of air hockey became an almost instant gaming success, namely at carnivals and in college game rooms. Despite the growing success however, Brunswick soon became displeased by the image of air hockey as a carnival attraction and set out to legitimatize the game as a serious sport. in 1974, Brunswick held the first ever Air Hockey World Championship at the Holiday Inn in New York City.

Regional champions attended to compete for a $5000 purse. For the event, in a further attempt to make air hockey legitimate, legendary sportscaster Marv Albert announced the play-by-play, and NHL hockey star Derek “The Turk” Sanderson attended the event as a special guest. In all accounts, the event was a success, and an interest in air hockey tournaments swelled through the 70s.

In 1975, the United States Air-Table Hockey Association was formed by Philip Arnold, an avid player, to uniform rules and implement regulations. It is still the authority and governing body of air hockey to this day. The USAA has hosted an United States Championship and World Championship every year since its inception. It is interesting to note that Philip Arnold has never won the World Championships, but he has come in second 4 times.

Air Hockey Starts to Deflate

If there was ever a dark time in air hockey history, it was in the mid-80s with the advent of arcade games. With the onset of computer technology and gaming in arcades, air hockey quickly took a back seat to the new games.

Air hockey may have died out if it wasn’t for one air hockey fan, Mark Robbins. Robbins took out an ad in a trade magazine asking people to donate their old air hockey tables. He was afraid that company’s would completely stop manufacturing. He collected tables from across the country and remodeled them in the original Brunswick design. He then convinced U.S. Billiards, the only remaining air hockey table manufacturer, to create new, better quality tables in the original design.

In 1985, Robbins also convinced Dynamo Corporation, a foosball table maker, to begin creating tournament-quality air hockey tables. In that first year, only an estimated 100 were sold, but by the time he stopped his effort to revive the sport in 1993, the company had begun selling thousands.

Just like most sports, air hockey history is made up of individuals that were passionate enough to keep it growing. Because of this, it is now as popular as ever, 40 years later.

~Zain on the East Coast

Highway Eleven is the longest road in Canada.  It starts in Toronto and loops up through Quebec and Ontario before it crosses into the US at Baudette, Minnesota.  Highway 11 runs through northern Minnesota through Warroad (The Original Hockey Town USA) and Roseau (The Capital of the State of Hockey) before running into North Dakota.  There are over 70 NHL players who have come from small towns along Hwy 11.

The NHL has been around longer than most of its other professional sport league counterparts, but its draft was one of the last developed. Since the league’s official development in 1917, the NHL managed without a draft until 1963, almost fifty years later.

If you were a hockey fan in 1974, you might remember Taro Tsujimoto, the star center of the Tokyo Katanas of the Japan Ice Hockey League (JIHL). He was the eleventh round pick of Buffalo Sabres’ general manager “Punch” Imlach, a man well known for both his bark and his bite.

For those of you thinking, “Wasn’t Tsujimoto bogus?” You’re absolutely right! As the story goes, Imlach was so frustrated with the lengthy draft that year he decided to create the fictional Japanese player in hopes of having some fun at the NHL’s expense. Not knowing any better, the league made the pick official: even The Hockey News claimed it a legitimate pick. It wasn’t until weeks later that Imlach revealed the truth of his pick.

More recently, in 2003, the Florida Panthers attempted to draft Alex Ovechkin, of Russia, but were not allowed. Why? The cut-off date for the NHL draft fell two days before his eighteenth birthday! Allegedly, the Panthers tried to convince the NHL that the extra days involved with it being a leap year should count toward Ovechkin’s age. Incidentally, 2003 was NOT a leap year.

While on the topic of players who didn’t originate from Canada, how many do you suppose were players drafted first, overall into the NHL? Of the forty-six players chosen first overall, eleven were not from Canada. That’s less than a quarter of the players! The eleven are as follows, including draft year and origin:

Brian Lawton, 1983, US
Mike Modano, 1988, US
Mats Sundin, 1989, Sweden
Roman Hamrlik, 1992, Czech Republic
Bryan Berard, 1995, US
Patrik Stefan, 1999, Czech Republic
Rick DiPietro, 2000, US
Ilya Kovalchuk, 2001, Russia
Alexander Ovechkin, 2004, Russia
Erik Johnson, 2006, US
Patrick Kane, 2007, US

Finally, of the forty-six players ever drafted as first overall in the Entry Draft, only two played as goaltender, Rick DiPietro, in 2000 to the New York Islanders and Marc-Andre Fleury to the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2003. There was only one previous goaltender ever drafted, Michel Plasse of Montreal, to the Canadiens. However, Plasse was drafted during the days of the Amateur Draft and is generally discounted.

Before reading this article, did you know any of these facts? How many other sports can claim such oddities in their own draft histories?

-Dan “The Wisconsin Hockey Fan”

After the North Stars left for Dallas in 1993, Minnesotan hockey spirits were at an all-time low. Professional hockey had abandoned the one and only “State of Hockey”. Just a year later, thanks to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Kevin McLean, majority owner, and a heavily promoted name-the-team contest, Minnesota saw the triumphant return of professional minor league hockey in the form of the Minnesota Moose.

Moose merchandise, wittily dubbed “Moose Gear”, flew off the shelves, besting the revenue of all other minor league hockey teams. Like Kevin McLean had said, “The Moose is a name we can have fun with, and fun is a big part of the IHL’s approach to hockey.”

The first year was not very kind to The Moose, however. An up and down season left them fourth place in the IHL, their record standing at 34-35-12. Minnesotan hopes quickly began crumbling.

Support for The Moose became sparse their second season. Finishing last place in the IHL’s Western Conference caused many Minnesotans to shut the door completely.

Being the minor league affiliate of the Winnipeg Jets, The Minnesota Moose made the move to Manitoba in 1996 after just two short years. The team played there until 2011. They now recently relocated and have become the St. John’s IceCaps.

-Dan “The Wisconsin Hockey Fan”

Avid hockey fans know all the different moves various franchises made. Some existed for just a few short months after moving, while others were around for many years. Then, eventually, some of these franchises moved on until the original team was forgotten.

Minnesota, a state with a very proud hockey tradition, had a professional team, the Minnesota North Stars, who were in existence from 1967 – 1993. In the 1966 – 1967 season, there were just 6 NHL teams. The league, looking to expand to 12, was willing to listen to offers from a variety of different cities. The Minnesota North Stars successfully won a bid to become Minnesota’s first professional team.

The Metropolitan Sports Center was built in Bloomington, but it was just barely ready for the 1967 – 1968 season. Some seats were still not completed, but play still went on.

The team started off with a high degree of success, as it led the new expansion West Division halfway through its first season. But then, tragedy struck, when Bill Masterton was hit and fell backwards, slamming his head hard on the ice. He went unconscious, never came to awareness again, and died two days later. Masterton remains the only NHL player to die as a result of an injury to date. The team went on that year to lose to the St. Louis Blues in a seven-game series, which made them just one game shy of going to the Stanley Cup finals.

The team continued to experience a fair degree of success. It made the playoffs 15 times in its 26-year history. Although it made the Stanley Cup Finals twice, it did not win either time.

Minnesota Skips Town for Dallas

When he officially made the decision to relocate the franchise, owner Norm Green quickly became the most hated person in Minnesota. Among the reasons the team was moved include no deal being made for the construction of a new arena in the Twin Cities area, poor attendance during a succession of losing seasons, and a sexual harassment suit against Green, which reportedly resulted in his wife threatening to leave him unless he relocated the team.

The team then relocated to Dallas. As the Dallas Stars, the team won an NHL Championship in 1999 with star player Mike Modano, who was also a strong factor in the North Stars’ 1991 run to the Stanley Cup Finals. Modano’s retirement in 2011 made it official no more North Stars could be found playing in the league.

Professional hockey, however, made a return to Minnesota in 2000, when the Minnesota Wild began play. The team experienced a reasonable degree of success, making it to the Western Conference Finals in 2002-2003 and winning its first division championship in 2008.

-Dan “The Wisconsin Hockey Fan”