March 3, 2025: Hockey Histories: Origin Points

[On March 3^rd, 1875, the first organized ice hockey game was played. So this week for the sport’s 150^th 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 19^th 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?