Now You Know Big Book of Sports. Doug Lennox

question of who invented the game. One of the more popular derivations is the Old French hoquet, or “shepherd’s crook,” possibly a reference to the stick used in early forms of the game. Some think hoquet can be traced farther back to the Germanic root word hok or hak, which refers to a curved or bent piece of wood or metal. Likely, this is also the root of the English word hook. Nobody can say for sure, though. Hockey might just as easily owe its origin as a word to Scandinavia or Holland. One thing most people agree on, however, is that the word once signified the instrument of play rather than the game itself.

       Quickies

       Did you know …

      that just before British soldiers fled New York City in 1783 at the end of the Revolutionary War, they reportedly played a game of Irish hurling on skates, and that a version of hockey was played in Stoney Brook (today’s Princeton), New Jersey, in the winter of 1786?

       Why is street hockey called “shinny”?

      Although shins take a beating during a game of shinny, the name comes from the Celtic game of shinty. A pick-up game of hockey, either on the street or on ice, shinny has no formal rules, and the goals are marked by whatever is handy. The puck can be anything from a ball to a tin can. There’s no hoisting, bodychecking, or lifting the puck because no one wears pads. Shinny is a uniquely Canadian expression.

      The first professional shin pads were hand-stitched leather-covered strips of bamboo, wrapped around the lower leg outside knee-high stockings.

      For many Canadian kids during the 1930s and 1940s, copies of the Eaton’s catalogue shoved into their socks were their first shin pads.

       Who made the first hockey sticks?

      The First Nations connection to the very first hockey sticks got a boost in early 2008 when the son of a Quebec City antique dealer acquired what he claims is a 350-year-old curved Mi’kmaq stick that he says proves Natives played hockey in Canada as early as the late seventeenth century. The man’s assertion hasn’t been met with much support among experts, but one thing is certain: the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia were carving single-piece hockey sticks at least as early as the 1870s and probably earlier. They utilized a wood known as hornbeam (also called ironwood) because of its strength. Later they turned to yellow birch when they exhausted the available hornbeam. These early sticks curved up like field hockey sticks and were much shorter and heavier than the kind used in modern ice hockey. The Starr Manufacturing Company in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, started producing hockey sticks in the late nineteenth century under the brand names Mic-Mac and Rex. The company’s sticks were immensely popular well into the 1930s. Starr was also famous for its skates, which it began manufacturing in the 1860s.

       Quickies

       Did you know …

      that the world’s largest hockey stick is in Duncan, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island? The 207 foot, 32 ton wooden stick once adorned the entrance to Vancouver’s Expo 86. Duncan has been home to the colossal stick since 1988 and has been trying for the past 20 years to get it recognized officially in The Guinness Book of World Records as the planet’s largest. Recently, the town succeeded in its quest, though perhaps that has something to do with the fact that British Columbia billionaire Jimmy Pattison now owns the Guinness World Book Company, publisher of the famous record tome.

       Who drew up the first recorded rules for organized hockey?

      James George Aylwin Creighton, a McGill University student, a Halifax native, and the captain of one of the teams that played the first indoor hockey game in Montreal, has the distinction of drawing up the first recorded rules for organized hockey. He accomplished this feat in 1873, and the rules were published in the Montreal Gazette on February 27, 1877, after a series of four games between Creighton’s Metropolitan Club and the rival St. James Club held in Montreal’s Victoria Skating Rink. Creighton’s rules, now called the Montreal Rules, likely derived from the earlier Halifax Rules. They are, in many respects, quite similar to the rules of field hockey.

       When was the first organized hockey team founded?

      On January 31, 1877, McGill University students started the first organized ice hockey club. Employing codified rules, hockey officials, and team uniforms, the McGill University Hockey Club played a challenge match against a loose collection of lacrosse and football players. McGill beat its opponents 2–1.

       Quickies

       Did you know …

      that Montreal’s Victoria Skating Rink, which opened for business in 1862, was the first building in Canada to be electrified, and was the scene of the first Stanley Cup playoff game in 1894? The arena closed for good in 1937. Today its site features a parking garage.

       Why is Toronto’s hockey team called the Maple Leafs?

      In 1927, after having just been fired by the Rangers, Conn Smythe took the winnings from a horse race and bought the Toronto St. Pats hockey team, renaming them the Maple Leafs. Impressed with how brilliantly Canadians had fought in the First World War, Smythe named his new team after the soldiers’ maple leaf insignia. Smythe is the man who said of hockey, “If you can’t beat them in the alley, you can’t beat them on the ice.”

       What was the first arena built especially for ice hockey?

      There are two claimants to this distinction. Dey’s Skating Rink in Ottawa was opened in December 1896 and was torn down in 1920. Ottawa, represented by the Ottawa Hockey Club (also known as the Silver Seven and the Senators), won its first Stanley Cup in 1903 at Dey’s. The Montreal Arena, also called the Westmount Arena, began operations on December 31, 1898, and became home to a variety of teams, including Montreal’s Shamrocks, Victorias, AAAs, Wanderers, and Canadiens. The rink burned down on January 2, 1918, causing the Wanderers to fold. The Canadiens moved back to the Jubilee Arena where they had played before taking up residence at the Montreal Arena. In the summer of 1919 the Jubilee also burned down, forcing the Canadiens to build and move to the Mount Royal Arena, the Habs’ last rink before relocating to the Montreal Forum in 1926. The Mount Royal Arena, strangely enough, also burned down, but not until February 2000.

       Quickies …

       Did you know …

      that the second organized hockey team in history was the Montreal Victorias, which debuted in 1881 and later went on to win the Stanley Cup in 1895, holding it from that year until 1899 (except for a challenge loss to the Winnipeg Victorias in 1896) when they lost it for good to the Montreal Shamrocks?

       When was the first game in the National Hockey League played?

      The first two games in the spanking new National Hockey League were played on December 19, 1917. The Montreal Wanderers edged the Toronto Arenas 10–9 and the Montreal Canadiens defeated the Ottawa Senators 7–4. The Wanderers’ match only attracted 700 fans. Unfortunately for the Wanderers, once one of the greatest hockey teams and winners of the Stanley Cup four times, their arena burned down two weeks later and the franchise folded.

       What was the first hockey book?

      Montrealer and Hockey Hall of Famer Arthur Farrell was a star forward with the Montreal Shamrocks, winners of the Stanley Cup in 1899 and 1900. Farrell published the first known hockey book in 1899. It was called Hockey: Canada’s Royal Winter Game and was more of a manual for the sport than a meditation about it, but at least it was a start. Farrell subsequently produced two other hockey publications. The third outlined the origins of the game, detailed the rules in Canada and the United States, and featured comments by Canadian hockey stars on the art of playing various positions. You might