Development Of Hockey

The roots of hockey are buried deep in antiquity. Historical records show that a crude form of the game was played in Egypt 4,000 years ago. Various museums offer evidence that a form of the game was played by the Romans and Greeks as well as by the Aztecs several centuries before Columbus arrived in the New World. The inaugural Olympic Hockey Competition for men was held in London in 1908 with England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales competing separately. With the addition of Germany and France, the competition ran with six teams. Motivated by hockey’s omission from the 1924 Paris Games, the Fédération Internationale de Hockey sur Gazon (FIH) was founded by Paul Léautey. M. Léautey, who would later become the first president of the FIH, called together seven National Federations to form the sport’s international governing body.

Until the mid-1980s it was generally accepted that ice hockey derived from English field hockey and Indian lacrosse and was spread throughout Canada by British soldiers in the mid-1800s. The first recorded public indoor ice hockey game, with rules largely borrowed from field hockey, took place in Montreal’s Victoria Skating Rink in 1875 between two teams of McGill University students. By the opening of the 20th century, sticks were being manufactured, shin pads were worn, the goaltender began to wear a chest protector (borrowed from baseball), and arenas (still with natural ice and no heat for spectators) were being constructed throughout eastern Canada. The National Hockey Association (NHA), the forerunner of the National Hockey League (NHL), was organized in 1910 and became the strongest hockey association in North America.