[On March
3rd, 1875, the first organized ice hockey game was played. So this
week for the sport’s 150th anniversary I’ll AmericanStudy a handful
of hockey histories, leading up to a weekend post on some SportsStudiers we can
all learn from!]
On three
telling and compelling layers to that first organized game.
1)
James Creighton: Railway
engineer and lawyer Creighton is known as the father of organized hockey, as he
certainly didn’t invent the sport itself (compared for example to James
Naismith and basketball); an informal, outdoor version known as both hockey
and “shinny”
was already being played on frozen ponds in the 1850s Nova Scotia of Creighton’s
youth. But as I discussed with baseball’s 19th century evolution in my recent podcast (the Third
Inning in particular), it took a while for that local, community version of the
sport to become organized, and a key step in that process was Creighton
gathering groups of players (many from nearby McGill University) and providing
sticks for workouts at Montreal’s Victoria
Skating Rink in the early 1870s (he knew the rink from his work there as a judge
for figure skating competitions). After years of practicing together, those
players were finally ready to put on a full, organized game, with Creighton captaining
the Montreal Football Club against the Rink’s home team.
2)
The Game: The pre-game announcement
in the Montreal Gazette noted a specific change that would significantly
reshape the sport’s future: “Some fears have been expressed on the part of
intending spectators that accidents were likely to occur with the ball flying
about in too lively a manner, to the imminent danger of lookers on, but we
understand that the game will be played with a flat circular piece of wood,
thus preventing all danger of its leaving the surface of the ice.” That
addition of the puck would be more than enough to make this 1875 game a true
origin point for the sport (with shinny/pond hockey, which uses a ball, almost
a distinct sport in its own right that likewise endures to this day), but the Gazette’s follow-up report on the game makes
clear that its play was also quite representative of how the sport would
evolve, as exemplified by the phrase “the efforts of the players exciting much
merriment as they wheeled and dodged each other.”
3)
The
Melee: Of course, hockey players don’t always dodge each other, and their
hits aren’t limited to in-play collisions. I’ll write more in tomorrow’s post
about the overall history and place of fighting in the sport, but it’s pretty
telling that this first organized game likewise concluded with an extended
brawl. The fact that this fight wasn’t just between players—instead, players
from both teams apparently brawled with Victoria Skating Club members who were angry
that the rink had been used for this purpose—only reiterates how much fighting was
part of hockey’s collective DNA from the outset. As the Daily British Whig newspaper described this telling postgame
scene, “Shins and heads were battered, benches smashed, and the lady spectators
fled in confusion.”
Next
hockey history tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Hockey histories you’d highlight?
