Articles by sr edler
Women’s ice hockey had already been around for some time, in one form or another, during the earlier years of the sport’s organized infancy. But during the World War I window in the late 1910s, women’s hockey came to experience an increased boost in popularity.
This popularity boost was partly...
The New York Hockey Club first launched its operations for the 1895–96 season (as the Hockey Club of New York) when Arthur Davies Knowlson, a player from Lindsay, Ontario, organized the club with a group of fellow Canadian expats, playing in exhibition games. The players were predominantly from...
James Cree was born on August 25, 1889 in St. Regis Reservation in Upstate New York, as a Mohawk member of the Akwesasne territory, a territory also including parts of southern Ontario and Quebec in Canada across the St. Lawrence River.
Growing up on the Canadian side of border Cree came in...
Dictionary sources make the claim that a loafer, while in human form, is an idle person, or someone who does nothing.
The Vancouver Sun, while reporting on an offside infraction committed by star forward Fred “Cyclone” Taylor during a February 21, 1919 game in the Pacific Coast Hockey...
Ice hockey players in Canada during the first two decades of the 1900s, whether professional or amateur, didn’t play in as many league games per season as would later become the norm during the latter half of the same century. But outside of also competing in a number of different exhibition...
Andrew “Andy” Shearer was born on January 26, 1864 in Montreal, Quebec to James Traill Shearer and Eliza Shearer (née Graham). His father, who was a carpenter and a lumber manufacturer by trade, was an immigrant from Caithness in northern Scotland, whereas his mother was born in Montreal.
As an...
Trading players from one team to another in hockey, and getting players back in return, has a history almost as long the professional game itself.
It’s still quite a tricky task to track down the first hockey trade in history, but what’s clear is that deals between teams exchanging players...
Often when reading about classic old time era hockey teams one comes across the intriguing story of the 1907 Kenora Thistles. The small town boys from the city originally known as Rat Portage, on Lake of the Woods in westernmost Ontario near the Manitoba border, eventually bringing home the...
During the 1910s it was not entirely uncommon for deaf, or “deaf-mute” as they were called at the time, hockey players to pop up on the competitive hockey scene, either in the amateur or in the professional circuit.
Two of the more distinguished deaf hockey players around this time were Walter...
The era in ice hockey from around the turn of the twentieth century and up until the formation of the National Hockey League (NHL) in 1917 doesn’t have a formal name, but it is sometimes referred to as the “pre-NHL era.” Or, up until the Western Canada Hockey League (WCHL) disbanded in 1926, and...
Trafford Hicks with Arlington High School team
Organized ice hockey had relatively deep roots in New England, with Concord in New Hampshire appearing as somewhat of an early cradle, where St. Paul’s School under direction of coach Malcolm Kenneth Gordon ran an intramural program from the late...
Organized senior amateur league hockey in the Ottawa Valley, around the Ottawa River, had taken form already around the immediate turn of the twentieth century, in the form of the Ottawa Valley Hockey League (OVHL) – starting in 1898–99 – and the Lower Ottawa Hockey Association (LOHA), starting...
The first installations of the Ottawa City Hockey League appeared during the 1890s, where it was first an amateur league with both senior and junior teams, and later a junior league only. Among the inaugural clubs during the 1890–91 season were the Ottawa Hockey Club, Ottawa Gladstones, Ottawa...
John William McGrath was born on March 10, 1891 in St. John’s, Newfoundland to parents James Francis McGrath and Catherine McCarthy. His father was a fisherman as well as a civil servant and political figure in Placentia and St. Mary’s, Newfoundland. James Francis McGrath was a member of the...
Around the turn of the twentieth century, during the 1900–01 season, 24-year old James Joseph “Jimmy” Enright assembled a group of local teenage Ottawa boys to form a junior hockey team which would initially go under the name “Enright’s Boarders”. The youngsters trained and played at the...
The ice hockey team of the Skating Club of Brooklyn, colloquially known as the Brooklyn Skating Club, appeared as one of the four founding clubs during the inaugural 1896–97 season of the New York based American Amateur Hockey League (AAHL). The three others being the Brooklyn Crescents, the St...
Various family constellations have been part of the ice hockey world throughout the history of organized competition, most often made from a set of brothers. The Montreal Hockey Club (AAA), for instance, the first club to capture the Stanley Cup in 1893, had the Hodgson brothers, Billy and...
