Ice Hockey Organized: Montreal's First Indoor Game
The referee forgot to bring a rulebook because nobody had written one yet. When students from McGill University laced up for history's first organized indoor hockey game at the Victoria Skating Rink in Montreal, they borrowed rules from field hockey and lacrosse, swapped a ball for a flat wooden disc so it wouldn't fly into the 500 spectators, and made up the rest as they went. James Creighton, the organizer, had nine players per side—not six—crowding the ice. The Montreal Gazette buried the story on page two. Within thirty years, professional leagues would form, and that improvised flat disc would become the fastest object in professional sports, clocked at 110 mph.
March 3, 1875
151 years ago
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