Hockey grew up on Canadian ice and still argues about exactly where it was born. These stories run from a Montreal rink in 1875 to Olympic finals in the 2020s, by way of a church league in Halifax, a Seattle champion that lost its arena to a parking garage, a team named after a Disney movie, and a goalie who opened the NHL's door to women.
Every tile in a Hockey game carries one of these. Open one to read it now, or leave them for the board to hand you.
Legends
nine stories
1The one-eyed star who scored 14 in one game
On the tile: Frank McGee1905
Frank McGee lost the vision in one eye in a hockey accident early in his career, and he kept playing at the highest level anyway. In January 1905 his Ottawa Silver Seven defended the Stanley Cup against a challenge from the Dawson City Nuggets of the Yukon. Ottawa won the second game 23–2, and McGee scored 14 goals in it, a Stanley Cup record that still stands. He retired after the 1906 season, served as an army officer in World War I, and was killed at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
2The American in hockey's first Hall of Fame class
On the tile: Hobey Baker1910s
Hobey Baker made the St. Paul's School varsity at 14 and became a star at Princeton in both football and hockey, famous for his astonishing speed on skates. F. Scott Fitzgerald, a freshman during Baker's senior year, put a character based on him into his first novel, This Side of Paradise. Baker served as a captain in the 141st Aero Squadron in World War I and died at Toul, France, on December 21, 1918, aged 26. In 1945 he was part of the first class inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
3Fifty goals in 50 games, but never a scoring title
On the tile: Rocket Richard1945–1955
In 1944–45 Maurice Richard of the Montreal Canadiens scored 50 goals in 50 games, a mark that stood as a record for many years, and he retired as the NHL's career goals leader. Yet he never won the league's points title. His best chance came in March 1955, when he led the league in points and a fight with a Boston player ended with Richard striking a linesman. The league suspended him for the rest of the season and the playoffs, angry fans rioted in Montreal, and the scoring title went to his teammate Bernard Geoffrion by a single point.
4One shift, about one minute, and a place in history
On the tile: Larry Kwong1948
Larry Kwong grew up in Vernon, British Columbia, and was known in the minor leagues as the China Clipper. After leading the New York Rovers, the Rangers' farm team, in scoring, he was called up for a game against the Canadiens at the Montreal Forum on March 13, 1948. He played one shift of about a minute in the third period, and that was his entire NHL career. It made him the first player of Asian descent in league history. He went on to star in Quebec senior hockey and to coach in Switzerland.
On January 18, 1958, Willie O'Ree played for the Boston Bruins against the Canadiens in Montreal and became the first Black player in NHL history. He was also hiding something. During the 1955–56 season a puck had cost him nearly all the vision in his right eye, and he was advised to retire. He kept the injury secret instead, and as a left winger he had to turn his head far to the right to follow the play. He played professional hockey for 21 years and entered the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2018.
Gordie Howe played his first NHL game in 1946 and retired from the Detroit Red Wings in 1971, at 43. Two years later he came out of retirement to play for the Houston Aeros of the World Hockey Association, alongside his sons Mark and Marty, and was named the league's MVP. He returned to the NHL with the Hartford Whalers and played his final NHL game in April 1980, at 52. Then, on October 3, 1997, the 69-year-old took a single shift for the Detroit Vipers, making it six decades of professional hockey.
7Take away every goal and he still leads in points
On the tile: Wayne Gretzky1979–1999
Wayne Gretzky retired in 1999 with 894 goals and 1,963 assists, and the assists are the astonishing part. In hockey a goal and an assist each count as one point, and Gretzky's assists alone are enough to make him the NHL's all-time leading scorer. Had he never scored a single goal, no one would have passed him. He is also the only player to reach 2,000 career points, and he needed only 11 seasons to pass the points record that had taken Gordie Howe 26 NHL seasons to build.
On September 23, 1992, the brand-new Tampa Bay Lightning put a 20-year-old goaltender named Manon Rhéaume in net for a preseason game against the St. Louis Blues. She played the first period, faced nine shots and allowed two goals, and the period ended tied 2–2. She became the first woman to play in any of North America's major professional sports leagues. She had the résumé for it: world championship gold medals with Canada in 1992 and 1994, and later 24 games with men's minor-league teams.
Angela James started in a boys' house league in Toronto at age eight, after her mother threatened legal action against officials reluctant to let her play. At the first IIHF women's world championship, held in Ottawa in 1990, she scored 11 goals in five games as Canada won gold, and she became known as the Wayne Gretzky of women's hockey. She was left off Canada's team for the first Olympic women's tournament in 1998, a decision still debated. In 2010 she and American Cammi Granato became the first women inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
1The H on the Canadiens crest is not for Habitants
On the tile: Canadiens1917Myth busted
The Montreal Canadiens are nicknamed the Habs, and many people believe the H in the team's famous CH crest stands for Habitants. It does not. The crest arrived in 1917 along with the club's official name, Club de Hockey Canadien, and the H stands for hockey. The mix-up apparently began in 1924, when Madison Square Garden owner Tex Rickard told a reporter the H meant habitant, a word for the land-owning settlers of New France. The nickname itself is older: Le Devoir called the team the Habitants in 1914.
The Winnipeg Falcons were made up almost entirely of players of Icelandic heritage, and Winnipeg's Icelandic clubs had long been kept out of the mainstream leagues because of their immigrant background. Many Falcons served in World War I, and two early members were killed. After the war the team won the Allan Cup and went to Antwerp for the 1920 Olympics, the first Olympic hockey tournament. The Falcons outscored their opponents 29–1, won gold, and gave their sticks to the Swedish team as a keepsake. Winnipeg welcomed them home with a parade.
3So strong the Olympics sent them straight to the final round
On the tile: Toronto Grads1928
At the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Canada was represented by the University of Toronto Graduates, champions of the Allan Cup. Officials decided the Canadians were so far ahead of everyone else that they skipped the first round entirely while the other teams played it. Then the Grads beat Sweden 11–0, Great Britain 14–0 and Switzerland 13–0 to win gold. Their coach at home, Conn Smythe, did not go with them; he refused after players were added to the team against his wishes.
4The softball team that almost never lost at hockey
On the tile: Rivulettes1930s
The Preston Rivulettes began as a girls' softball team in Preston, Ontario, and formed a hockey team at the end of the 1930 season so they would have a winter sport. The original players were all teenagers. Led by captain Hilda Ranscombe, they won 10 Ontario championships and several national titles during the Depression. In an estimated 350 games they lost only three to five, depending on which records you trust. Early on, one rival coach wanted proof that their goalie was not a boy. Money troubles and World War II finally ended the team.
5The church-born league that played on borrowed time
On the tile: Colored League1895
The Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes was founded in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1895 by Black Baptists and Black intellectuals, partly to draw young men to Sunday services with the promise of a game between rival churches afterward. Teams such as the Africville Sea-Sides could use arenas only after the white leagues had finished their seasons, which left a playing window of about eight weeks. The hockey was fast and inventive, and big games drew as many as 1,200 fans. In 2024 Parks Canada declared the league an event of national historic significance.
6The first American champions lost their rink to parking
On the tile: Metropolitans1917
In 1917, in only their second season, the Seattle Metropolitans of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association beat the Montreal Canadiens three games to one and became the first American team to win the Stanley Cup. Bernie Morris scored 14 goals in the series, three more than the entire Canadiens team. Seattle reached two more Stanley Cup finals. Then, in 1924, came the announcement that the Seattle Ice Arena would be converted into a parking garage for the new Olympic Hotel across the street. No new arena was built, and the team folded that summer.
The Hamilton Tigers finished first in the NHL in 1924–25, and then refused to play in the playoffs. The league had stretched the schedule from 24 games to 30, and the players wanted $200 each for the extra games. Management said their contracts covered the season no matter how many games it held. League president Frank Calder suspended and fined the players and declared the Canadiens league champions instead. It was the first strike in NHL history. Before the next season, the Tigers' players were sold to a new team, the New York Americans.
8A car dealer's team won Canada's last gold for 50 years
On the tile: Mercurys1952
The Edmonton Mercurys took their name from their sponsor, the Edmonton car dealer Waterloo Mercury. Chosen to represent Canada at the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo, they first toured Europe for seven weeks. Their opening game fell on the day of King George VI's funeral, and the players wore black armbands. Three of the four rinks were outdoors, and one game was played in a blinding snowstorm. The Mercurys clinched gold with a 3–3 tie against the United States. No Canadian team won Olympic hockey gold again until 2002.
9Beaten eight straight times, then Olympic champions
On the tile: Salt Lake 20022002
Canada's women came to the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City with an 0–8 record against the United States in the games leading up to the Olympics, and the Americans had also beaten them for the first Olympic gold in 1998. The two teams met again in the final, and Canada won 3–2 despite a long string of penalties called against it. Hayley Wickenheiser led the tournament in scoring and was named MVP. It was Canada's first Olympic hockey gold since 1952, and the men's team won its final three days later.
1Hockey's greatest prize began as a bowl for flowers
On the tile: Lord Stanley1892
In March 1892 Canada's governor general, Lord Stanley, announced he would donate a challenge cup for the country's champion hockey team. What arrived in Ottawa early in 1893 was a small silver bowl, sold by a London silversmith's shop for 10 guineas, about $48. When the Toronto Star showed a photograph of it to Victorian silver expert John Culme, he called it a common garden rose bowl, the kind made to sit in the middle of a dining table filled with flowers. Stanley himself went home to England in 1893.
2Did the champions drop-kick the Cup into a canal?
On the tile: Rideau Canal1905Legend
Stanley Cup winners have not always been gentle with their prize. The story goes that after their 1905 victory, members of the Ottawa Silver Seven drop-kicked the trophy toward the Rideau Canal and left it overnight. Tellings disagree on who kicked it and where it landed, but all agree it was recovered the next day. Later mishaps have differing versions too: the Montreal Wanderers left the Cup with a photographer, and it ended up as a flower pot, and in 1924 the Canadiens left it at the roadside after car trouble on the way to a party.
Lord Stanley said winning teams could add a silver ring to his bowl to carry their names, and teams kept adding them. By the mid-1940s the Cup looked like a tall stovepipe, so it was redesigned in the late 1940s and again in the late 1950s. Today a replica of the original bowl sits on top, and below it are wide barrel bands, each with room for 13 championship teams. When the newest band at the bottom fills up, the oldest band at the top comes off and is retired to the Hockey Hall of Fame, where the original bowl also lives.
Names go onto the Stanley Cup one letter at a time, hammered in with letter punches, and for decades mistakes simply stayed. The 1962–63 champions became the TORONTO MAPLE LEAES. The 1971–72 champions became the BQSTQN BRUINS, and the 1980–81 champions the NEW YORK ILANDERS. In 1984 Edmonton Oilers owner Peter Pocklington added his father, Basil, who had no connection to the team; the NHL ordered the name removed, and it now sits under a row of 16 X's. When Adam Deadmarsh's name was misspelled in 1996, it was corrected, a Stanley Cup first.
5The Final no one won, and the forfeit Seattle refused
On the tile: 1919 Final1919
The 1919 Stanley Cup Final between the Montreal Canadiens and the Seattle Metropolitans stood at two wins each and a tie when the influenza pandemic struck the teams. Five Canadiens were hospitalized, and Montreal no longer had enough players to dress a team. The Canadiens offered to forfeit the last game, and with it the Cup. Seattle coach Pete Muldoon and league president Frank Patrick declined the offer, and the series ended with no champion. Canadiens player Joe Hall died in Seattle a few days after the series was canceled.
6The 44-year-old coach who played goal in the Final
On the tile: Lester Patrick1928
In the second game of the 1928 Stanley Cup Final, New York Rangers goaltender Lorne Chabot was hurt in the second period. Two other goalies were watching from the stands, but the Montreal Maroons refused to let the Rangers use either one. So the Rangers' coach, 44-year-old Lester Patrick, went into goal himself. He played the rest of the game, the Rangers won 2–1 in overtime, and they went on to take the Cup. The Lester Patrick Trophy, for contributions to hockey in the United States, is named after him.
When James Norris Sr. died in December 1952, his will put his youngest child, Marguerite, in charge of the Detroit Red Wings. At 25 she became the first woman to run an NHL team. The other owners let her sit in on board meetings but would not let her vote, so she devised secret hand signals to tell general manager Jack Adams how she wanted him to vote for Detroit. The Red Wings won the Stanley Cup in 1954 and 1955, and Marguerite Norris became the first woman to have her name engraved on it.
In 1951 Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman Bill Barilko scored in overtime to beat the Montreal Canadiens and win the Stanley Cup, in a Final in which all five games went to overtime. That summer he went on a fishing trip in northern Ontario, and his plane went down. His remains were not found until 1962, the same year the Leafs won their first Stanley Cup since his goal. The Tragically Hip remembered him in their 1992 song Fifty Mission Cap, and the Leafs retired his number 5 that year.
The Stanley Cup has been lost, misplaced and even stolen, and at least once it was simply borrowed. In 1979, after the Montreal Canadiens' victory parade, star Guy Lafleur put the trophy in the trunk of his car and took it to Thurso, Quebec, the town where his parents lived. His family and neighbors enjoyed seeing hockey's most famous trophy up close. The Cup's trustees were less pleased. Years later the rules relaxed, and every player on a winning team now gets a day with the Cup.
Montreal, Kingston in Ontario, and Windsor in Nova Scotia have all claimed to be hockey's birthplace, and the story goes that the first game was played at a spot near Windsor. The Canadian Encyclopedia says there is little clear evidence to settle it. What is documented is a game at Montreal's Victoria Skating Rink on March 3, 1875, organized by James Creighton and played with a flat wooden disc instead of a ball, which was less likely to bounce up and hurt spectators. In 2002 the International Ice Hockey Federation sided with Montreal.
For decades a battered hockey stick hung on a barbershop wall in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, attached to a small sleigh. In 2008 Mark Presley bought it from the retiring barber for $1,000. The initials WM carved into the blade turned out to belong to William "Dilly" Moffatt, born in 1829, and researchers at Mount Allison University found the stick had been made in the mid-1830s from a single piece of sugar maple. In 2015, billed as the world's oldest known hockey stick, it was bought by the Canadian Museum of History for $300,000.
Early hockey was crowded. The first organized games were played with nine players a side, and the puck could not be passed forward. Teams later settled on seven men a side, one more than today, and the extra man was the rover; in Hobey Baker's day it was the key attacking position. Six-man hockey took hold in 1911, but the Pacific Coast Hockey Association, founded that year by Lester and Frank Patrick, kept seven men a side, with a rover, center, two wingers, two defensemen and a goalie.
Early hockey borrowed its onside rule from rugby, so players could not pass the puck forward. The rule relaxed in stages: forward passes were allowed between the blue lines in 1918 and within each of the three zones by 1929–30, but the puck still had to be carried over a blue line. That changed in 1943–44, when Rangers coach Frank Boucher's new center red line let teams pass the puck out of their own zone. The blue line itself was among the ideas of Frank Patrick, who proposed 22 rules that ended up in the NHL rulebook.
5The brothers who brought artificial ice to Canada
On the tile: Artificial ice1911
Brothers Lester and Frank Patrick, with backing from their father, a wealthy lumberman, founded the Pacific Coast Hockey Association in 1911. They built arenas for its teams, and in Vancouver and Victoria they built Canada's first two artificial ice rinks. In mild Seattle, the league's arena kept its surface frozen by running brine through eight miles of pipe. Natural ice was less dependable: during the 1920 Stanley Cup Final, warm weather left Ottawa's ice unplayable, and the remaining games were moved to Toronto.
6The ice machine born at a California skating rink
On the tile: Zamboni1949
The first Zamboni was built for a skating rink in Paramount, California. Frank Zamboni, his brother Lawrence and a cousin built the Iceland rink there, and resurfacing ice by hand took three or four workers more than an hour. Frank's first working machine, the Model A of 1949, was built from war-surplus parts that included a hydraulic cylinder from a Douglas bomber. In 1950 skating star Sonja Henie saw it in action and wanted one. A machine sold to the Boston Bruins in 1954 is now at the Hockey Hall of Fame.
7Jacques Plante did not wear the first goalie mask
On the tile: Goalie mask1927–1959Myth busted
Jacques Plante is often remembered as the goalie who introduced the mask. He was not the first to wear one. On February 7, 1927, Queen's University goalie Elizabeth Graham wore a fencing cage in a game, and in 1930 Clint Benedict wore a mask for five games. What Plante did was make it permanent. On November 1, 1959, a shot by Andy Bathgate hit him in the face; after being stitched up he returned wearing a mask, over his coach's objections, and became the first goalie to wear one regularly.
The story goes that the curved stick blade began with an accident. At a Chicago Black Hawks practice, Stan Mikita's stick got caught in a crack in the doorway by the bench and the blade bent. Instead of grabbing a new stick, he kept shooting and liked how the puck moved. Mikita was not alone: the Rangers' Andy Bathgate had been bending blades too, and Mikita and teammate Bobby Hull began asking for sticks with the curve built in. The wild shots that followed led the NHL to start limiting curves by 1967.
The first IIHF-sanctioned women's world championship, held in Ottawa in 1990, did a few things differently. Bodychecking was allowed, and Team Canada played in hot pink jerseys and white pants. The uniforms were the idea of general manager Pat Reid, who had also been talked into organizing and marketing the tournament at the last minute on a shoestring budget. The pink made headlines and drew criticism, but Reid later said the marketing gimmick worked. A record crowd of 8,784 watched Geraldine Heaney score the winning goal as Canada took gold.