When did Hockey begin?

Answer 1

Ice hockey, often referred to simply as hockey in Canada and the United States, is a team sport played on ice. It is a speedy and physical sport. Ice hockey is most popular in areas that are sufficiently cold for natural, reliable seasonal ice cover, though with the advent of indoor artificial ice rinks it has become a year-round pastime at the amateur level in major metropolitan areas such as cities that host a National Hockey League (NHL) or other professional-league team. It is one of the four major North American professional sports, and is represented by the National Hockey League (NHL) at the highest level, and the National Women's Hockey League (NWHL), the highest level of women's ice hockey in the world. It is the official national winter sport of Canada, where the game enjoys immense popularity, and is also the most popular spectator sport in Finland. Only six of the thirty NHL franchises are based in Canada, but Canadian players outnumber Americans in the league by a ratio of almost four to one. About thirty percent of the league's players are non-North American.

While there are 64 total members of the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF), Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden and the United States have finished in most of the coveted 1st, 2nd and 3rd places at IIHF World Championships. Of the 63 medals awarded in men's competition at the Olympic level from 1920 on, only six did not go to the one of those countries, or a former entity thereof, such as Czechoslovakia or the Soviet Union. Only one of those six medals was above bronze. Those seven nations have also captured 162 of 177 medals awarded at 59 non-Olympic IIHF World Championships, and all medals since 1954. Likewise, all nine Olympic and 27 IIHF World Women Championships medals have gone to one of those seven countries. Also deserving of mention is Switzerland, which has won two men's bronze medals at the Olympics and finished third at least seven times at the World Championships. Switzerland also maintains one of the oldest and top-rated ice hockey leagues (the Swiss Nationalliga) outside of the NHL

The Beginning (1800-1850)



There are many conflicting theories on when and where the game of hockey started but for all accounts the game evolved out the Irish field game called Hurley. Hurley is played year round in Ireland on a field with a ball and stick. The game of Hurley was played regularly in the fields of Nova Scotia back in the early 1800's.


But when winter came around Hurley was to difficult to play because of the rough ground caused by snow so the game was eventually moved onto the ice. This new game called "Hurley on Ice" basically started at King's College in Windsor, Nova Scotia just outside of Halifax and became very popular on the East coast for the first 50 years of the 1800's

Answer 2

Hockey-like games played on grass, which are ancestors both to modern ice hockey and modern field hockey, go as far back as the 1200s BC. Sports resembling modern ice hockey only go back to the early 1800s (or possibly late 1700s), where it was first seen in Canada. The problem is that nobody can really agree where hockey was invented. It seems every region has a town claiming to be the birthplace of hockey. The best-supported cases are in Windsor, NS and Kingston, ON, who hold by far the earliest written accounts of a game being played there (the Kingston account is written in 1843, but the Windsor account, written in 1844, refers to an earlier time period (probably the 1810s)). And just to add in another confounding variable, there's the case of the McGill Rules with at McGill University in Montreal back in the 1890s. It has been said that the modern rules of hockey can eventually be traced to these rules, and no earlier ruiles can make that claim, prompting Montreal to also make a claim as the "birthplace of modern hockey". So really the only answer anyone can say with certainty is that the game was born in Canada.... past that, it's anybody's guess.

Answer 3

Don't listen to these other guys, here's what really happened, first I need to back it up a bit:

The Plank era, neither time nor space exists.

Inflationary era, radiation begins to form in the universe. I don't know where it came from.

Suddenly (0.000000000001 seconds) a particle of matter sees a particle of anti matter and thinks "hey, that's kinda cute", the two hook up for a brief encounter but soon discover they are not really compatible.

The encounter, while brief (.0001) seconds, spawned the seeds of matter leading to all sorts of excitement in the universe. The gestation period, otherwise referred to as nucleosynthesis, resulted in the birth the twins, Proton and Neutron.

Over a period of time Proton and Neutron discovered other partners and in turn had offspring of their own. Various mating lead to the birth of Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, and of course Lity.

Lity being a creative little sort, one day discovered that if you were to combine the DNA of of his relatives you would get all sorts of wonderful things. One of which is wood and another would be rubber. Well, Lity's mind just exploded from there and quickly he discovered what has evolved into the game of hockey.

Now you know the rest of the story.

Answer 4

Hockey is a game that evolved. No one looked at a stick and object on the ice and thought, "Hey, this must be fun, and here're the rules" like James Naismith. The earliest depictions of hockey was actually from Egypt where hieroglyphs of two people playing with a stick and ball.

Answer 5

"Games between teams hitting an object with curved sticks have been played throughout history; 4000 year-old drawings at the huge tombs in Egypt depict a sport resembling field hockey.[2] The 1527 Galway Statutes in Ireland made reference to "the horlinge of the litill balle with hockie stickes or staves."[3] The etymology of the word hockey is uncertain. It may derive from the Old French word hoquet, shepherd's crook, or from the Middle Dutch word hokkie, meaning shack or doghouse, which in popular use meant goal. Many of these games were developed for fields, though where conditions allowed they were also played on ice. 17th century Dutch paintings show townsfolk playing a hockey-like game on a frozen canal."

Answer 6

Hockey's earliest forms were often referred to as "Gurgenhilgen". A sport created by ice fishermen in the always frozen upper polar cap, way before the turn of the century. Two teams would wrap seal blubber around their feet, and using battle-axes would try to bludgeon a live salmon into a hole cut into the ice. As you can imagine injuries were common. Much like the highly refined sport we now know as hockey.

Answer 7

The foundation of the modern game centres on Montreal. On March 3, 1875 the first organized indoor game was played at Montreal's Victoria Skating Rink by James Creighton and several McGill University students

Answer 8

Marco is correct.

"Facts do not cease to exist simply because they are ignored."
- Aldous Leonard Huxley

Ice Hockey is a Canadian game. It's as Canadian as the Maple Leaf.
"Go west, young man", was the advice of wise men to the youth of the Maritimes as Canada began to develop. They should have added, "And don't forget to look back!", for had they done so, Canadians wouldn't still be searching for the Birthplace of Hockey. It would have been obvious that our national winter sport began and developed as the nation did, and in the same direction, from east to west. Ice Hockey, the fastest and most exciting winter game in the world, got its start on the east coast, in Windsor, Nova Scotia. After developing for seventy-five years in Nova Scotia, it began to spread to the west coast; a trip which was to take an amazing fifteen years.

Ice Hockey was not invented, nor did it start on a certain day of a particular year. It originated around 1800, in Windsor, where the boys of Canada's first college, King's College School, established in 1788, adapted the exciting field game of Hurley to the ice of their favorite skating ponds and originated a new winter game, Ice Hurley. Over a period of decades, Ice Hurley gradually developed into Ice Hockey.

A man who is still North America's most quoted author, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, born in Windsor in 1796, told of King's boys playing "hurley on the ice" when he was a young student at the school around 1800. This is the earliest reference in English literature of a stick-ball game being played on ice in Canada. Haliburton, who wrote the first history of Nova Scotia, was the first Canadian to acquire international acclaim as a writer, and the account of his recollection is therefore of great significance.

Soon after the boys of King's College School adapted Hurley to the ice, the soldiers at Fort Edward, in Windsor, took up the new game. They carried the game to Halifax, where it gained impetus as it was played on the many and beautiful Dartmouth Lakes, and frozen inlets of Halifax Harbour.

The development of Ice Hurley into Ice Hockey during the 19th Century is chronicled in the newspapers of Nova Scotia.

Over the years, the origin of the game has been misunderstood all across the nation and false claims have been made of the game beginning in both Kingston, Ontario and Montreal. These were based on faulty information which resulted from incomplete research. Decades earlier, people knew from whence the game had come.

Dr. A.H. Beaton, secretary of the Ontario Hockey Association in 1898, told the country in a national publication, the 'Canadian Magazine', that "Nearly twenty years ago hockey, as a scientific sport, was introduced into Upper Canada from Nova Scotia, the latter being the indisputable home in Canada of this game."

Answer 9

hockey was first created by britsish soldiers stationed inn canada back in the day they started with brooms and a rock then they eventually made sticks and a puck

Answer 10

in the 1800s