NHL
The National Hockey League (NHL; French:Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH) is a professional ice hockey league in North America, currently comprising 31 teams: 24 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The NHL is considered to be the premier professional ice hockey league in the world,[2] and one of themajor professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada. The Stanley Cup, the oldest professional sports trophy in North America,[3] is awarded annually to the league playoff champion at the end of each season.
The National Hockey League was organized on November 26, 1917, in Montreal after the suspension of operations of its predecessor organization, the National Hockey Association(NHA), which had been founded in 1909 inRenfrew, Ontario.[4] The NHL immediately took the NHA's place as one of the leagues that contested for the Stanley Cup in an annual interleague competition before a series of league mergers and folds left the NHL as the only league left competing for the Stanley Cup in 1926.
At its inception, the NHL had four teams—all in Canada, thus the adjective "National" in the league's name. The league expanded to the United States in 1924, when the Boston Bruinsjoined, and has since consisted of American and Canadian teams. From 1942 to 1967, the league had only six teams, collectively (if not contemporaneously) nicknamed the "Original Six". The NHL added six new teams to double its size at the 1967 NHL expansion. The league then increased to 18 teams in 1974 and 21 teams in 1979. In the 1990s, the NHL further expanded to 30 teams, and added its 31st team in 2017.
The league's headquarters have been in New York City since 1989 when the head office moved there from Montreal.[5]
After a labour-management dispute that led to the cancellation of the entire 2004–05 season, the league resumed play in 2005–06 under a new collective agreement that included a salary cap. In 2009, the NHL enjoyed record highs in terms of sponsorships, attendance, and television audiences.[6]
The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) considers the Stanley Cup to be one of the "most important championships available to the sport".[7] The NHL draws many highly skilled players from all over the world and currently has players from approximately 20 countries.[8] Canadians have historically constituted the majority of the players in the league, with an increasing percentage of American and European players in recent seasons.
History
Early years
The National Hockey League was established in 1917 as the successor to the National Hockey Association (NHA). Founded in 1909, the NHA began play one year later with seven teams in Ontario and Quebec, and was one of the first major leagues in professional ice hockey. But by the NHA's eighth season, a series of disputes with Toronto Blueshirtsowner Eddie Livingstone led the other team owners, representing the Montreal Canadiens,Montreal Wanderers, Ottawa Senators, andQuebec Bulldogs to meet about the league's future.[9] Realizing the NHA constitution left them unable to force Livingstone out, the four teams voted instead to suspend the NHA, and on November 26, 1917, formed the National Hockey League. Frank Calder was chosen as its first president, serving until his death in 1943.[10]
The Bulldogs were unable to play, and the remaining owners created a new team in Toronto, the Arenas, to compete with the Canadiens, Wanderers and Senators.[11] The first games were played on December 19, 1917.[12] The Montreal Arena burned down in January 1918, causing the Wanderers to cease operations,[13] and the NHL continued on as a three-team league until the Bulldogs returned in 1919.[14]
The NHL replaced the NHA as one of the leagues that competed for the Stanley Cup, which was an interleague competition back then. Toronto won the first NHL title, and then defeated the Vancouver Millionaires of thePacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) for the 1918 Stanley Cup.[15] The Canadiens won the league title in 1919; however their Stanley Cup Final against the PCHA's Seattle Metropolitans was abandoned as a result of the Spanish Flu epidemic.[16] Montreal in 1924 won their first Stanley Cup as a member of the NHL.[17] The Hamilton Tigers, won the regular season title in 1924–25 but refused to play in the championship series unless they were given a C$200 bonus.[18] The league refused and declared the Canadiens the league champion after they defeated theToronto St. Patricks (formerly the Arenas) in the semi-final. Montreal was then defeated by the Victoria Cougars of the Western Canada Hockey League (WCHL) for the 1925 Stanley Cup. It was the last time a non-NHL team won the trophy,[19] as the Stanley Cup became thede facto NHL championship in 1926 after the WCHL ceased operation.[20]
The National Hockey League embarked on rapid expansion in the 1920s, adding theMontreal Maroons and Boston Bruins in 1924. The Bruins were the first American team in the league.[21] The New York Americansbegan play in 1925 after purchasing the assets of the Hamilton Tigers, and were joined by the Pittsburgh Pirates.[22] The New York Rangers were added in 1926.[23] TheChicago Black Hawks and Detroit Cougars(later Red Wings) were also added after the league purchased the assets of the defunct WCHL.[24] A group purchased the Toronto St. Patricks in 1927 and immediately renamed them the Maple Leafs.[25]
The Original Six
The first NHL All-Star Game was held in 1934 to benefit Ace Bailey, whose career ended on a vicious hit by Eddie Shore.[26] The second was held in 1937 in support of Howie Morenz's family when he died of a coronary embolism after breaking his leg during a game.[27]
The Great Depression and the onset of World War II took a toll on the league. The Pirates became the Philadelphia Quakers in 1930, then folded one year later. The Senators likewise became the St. Louis Eagles in 1934, also lasting only one year.[28] The Maroons did not survive, as they suspended operations in 1938.[29] The Americans were suspended in 1942 due to a lack of players, and never revived.[30]
The league was reduced to six teams for the1942–43 NHL season: the Boston Bruins, Chicago Black Hawks, Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens, New York Rangers and Toronto Maple Leafs. These six teams remained constant for 25 years, a period known as the Original Six. The league reached an agreement with the Stanley Cup trustees in 1947 to take full control of the trophy, allowing the NHL to reject challenges from other leagues that wished to play for the Cup.[31]
Maurice "Rocket" Richard became the first player to score 50 goals, doing so in a 50-game season.[32] Richard later led the Canadiens to five consecutive titles between 1956 and 1960, a record no team has matched.[33] Willie O'Ree broke the league'scolour barrier on January 18, 1958 when he made his debut with the Boston Bruins and became the first black player in league history.[34]
Post-Original Six expansion
By the mid-1960s, the desire for a network television contract in the U.S., and concerns that the Western Hockey League was planning to declare itself a major league and challenge for the Stanley Cup, spurred the league to undertake its first expansion since the 1920s. The league doubled in size for the1967–68 season, adding the Los Angeles Kings, Minnesota North Stars, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, California Sealsand St. Louis Blues.[35] Canadian fans were outraged that all six teams were placed in the United States,[36] and the league responded by adding the Vancouver Canucks in 1970 along with the Buffalo Sabres, who are located on the Canada–US border.[37] Two years later, the emergence of the newly founded World Hockey Association (WHA) led the league to add the New York Islanders and Atlanta Flames to keep the rival league out of those markets.[38] In 1974, the Washington Capitalsand Kansas City Scouts were added, bringing the league up to 18 teams.[39]
The National Hockey League fought the WHA for players, losing 67 to the new league in its first season of 1972–73,[40] including Bobby Hull, who signed a ten-year, $2.5 million contract with the Winnipeg Jets, the largest in hockey history at the time.[41] The league attempted to block the defections in court, but a counter-suit by the WHA led to a Philadelphia judge ruling the NHL's reserve clause to be illegal, thus eliminating the elder league's monopoly over the players.[42] Seven years of battling for players and markets financially damaged both leagues, leading to a 1979 merger agreement that saw the WHA cease operations while the NHL absorbed the Winnipeg Jets, Edmonton Oilers, Hartford Whalers and Quebec Nordiques.[43] The owners initially rejected this merger agreement by one vote, but a massive boycott of Molson Brewery products by fans in Canada caused the Montreal Canadiens, which was owned by Molson, to reverse its position, along with the Vancouver Canucks. In a second vote the plan was approved.[44]
Wayne Gretzky played one season in the WHA for the Indianapolis Racers (eight games) and the Edmonton Oilers (72 games) before the Oilers joined the National Hockey League for the 1979–80 season.[45] Gretzky went on to lead the Oilers to four Stanley Cup championships in 1984, 1985, 1987 and 1988, and set single season records for goals (92 in1981–82), assists (163 in 1985–86) and points (215 in 1985–86), as well as career records for goals (894), assists (1,963) and points (2,857).[45] He was traded to the Kings in 1988, a deal that dramatically improved the league's popularity in the United States, and provided the impetus for the 1990s expansion cycles that saw the addition of nine teams: the San Jose Sharks, Tampa Bay Lightning,Ottawa Senators, Mighty Ducks of Anaheim,Florida Panthers, Nashville Predators, Atlanta Thrashers now Winnipeg Jets, and in 2000 theMinnesota Wild and Columbus Blue Jackets.[46] On July 21, 2015, the NHL confirmed that it had received applications from prospective ownership groups in Quebec City and Las Vegas for possible expansion teams,[47] and on June 22, 2016, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman announced the addition of a 31st franchise, based in Las Vegas and later named the Vegas Golden Knights, into the NHL for the 2017–18 season.[48]
Labour issues
There have been four league-wide work stoppages in league history, all happening since 1992. The first was a strike by theNational Hockey League Players' Associationin April 1992 which lasted for ten days, but the strike was settled quickly and all affected games were rescheduled.[49]
A lockout at the start of the 1994–95 seasonforced the league to reduce the schedule from 84 games to just 48, with the teams playing only intra-conference games during the reduced season.[49] The resulting collective bargaining agreement (CBA) was set for renegotiation in 1998 and extended to September 15, 2004.[50]
With no new agreement in hand when the contract expired on September 15, 2004, league commissioner Gary Bettmanannounced a lockout of the players union and closed the league's head office.[50] The league vowed to install what it dubbed "cost certainty" for its teams, but the Players' Association countered that the move was little more than a euphemism for a salary cap, which the union initially said it would not accept. The lockout shut down the league for 310 days, the longest in sports history, as the NHL became the first professional sports league to lose an entire season.[50] A new collective bargaining agreement was eventually ratified in July 2005, including a salary cap. The agreement had a term of six years with an option of extending the collective bargaining agreement for an additional year at the end of the term, allowing the league to resume as of the 2005–06 season.[50] On October 5, 2005, the first post-lockout season took to the ice with all 30 teams. The NHL received record attendance in the 2005–06 season: an average of 16,955 per game.[51] After losing a season to a labour dispute in 2005, the League's TV audience was slower to rebound because of American cable broadcaster ESPN's decision to drop the sport.[52] The league's post-lockout agreement with NBC gave the league a share of revenue from each game's advertising sales, rather than the usual lump sum paid up front for game rights. The league's annual revenues were estimated at approximately $2.27 billion.[52]
At midnight September 16, 2012, the labour pact expired, and the league again locked out the players.[53] The owners proposed reducing the players' share of hockey-related revenues from 57 percent to 47 percent.[54] All games were cancelled up to January 14, 2013, as well as the 2013 NHL Winter Classic and the2013 NHL All-Star Weekend.[55][56][57][58] A tentative agreement was reached on January 6, 2013, on a ten-year deal.[59] On January 12, the league and the Players' Association signed a memorandum of understanding on the new deal, allowing teams to begin their training camps on January 13, with a shortened 48-game season schedule that began on January 19.[60]
Player safety issues
Player safety has become a major issue within the past five years and concussions, which result from a hard hit to the head, have been the biggest cause. With recent studies showing how concussions can affect retired players and how it has decreased their quality of life after retirement, concussions have become a very important topic of debate when it comes to player safety issues. This had significant effects on the league as elite players were being taken out of the game, such as Sidney Crosby being sidelined for approximately 10 and a half months, which adversely affected the league's marketability.[61] As a result, in December 2009, Brendan Shanahan was hired to replace Colin Campbell and given the role of Senior Vice-President of Player Safety. Shanahan began to hand out suspensions on high-profile perpetrators responsible for dangerous hits, such as Raffi Torres receiving 25 games for his hit on Marian Hossa.[62]
To aid with removing high speed collisions on icing, which had led to several potential career ending injuries such as Hurricanes' Defencemen Joni Pitkanen, the league mandated hybrid no-touch icing for the 2013–14 NHL season.[63]
On November 25, 2013, ten former players, Gary Leeman, Rick Vaive, Brad Aitken, Darren Banks, Curt Bennett, Richie Dunn, Warren Holmes, Bob Manno, Blair Stewart and Morris Titanic sued the league for negligence on protecting players from concussions. The suit came three months after the NFL agreed to pay former players US$765 million due to a player safety lawsuit.[64]
Women in the NHL
From 1952 to 1955, Marguerite Norris served as president of the Detroit Red Wings, the first woman NHL executive and the first woman to have her name engraved on the Stanley Cup. In 1992 Manon Rheaume became the first woman to play a game in any of the major professional North American sports leagues, as a goaltender for the Tampa Bay Lightningin an NHL pre-season game against the St. Louis Blues, stopping seven of nine shots.[65][66] In 2016 Dawn Braid was hired as the Arizona Coyotes' skating coach, making her the first female full-time coach in the NHL.[67]
Organizational structure
The Board of Governors is the ruling and governing body of the National Hockey League. In this context, each team is a member of the league, and each member appoints a Governor (usually the owner of the club), and two alternates to the Board. The current chairman of the Board is Boston Bruins owner, Jeremy Jacobs. The Board of Governors exists to establish the policies of the league, and to uphold its constitution. Some of the responsibilities of the Board of Governors include:[68]
- review and approve any rule changes to the game.
- hiring and firing of the commissioner.
- review and approve the purchase, sale, or relocation of any member club.
- review and approve the salary caps for member clubs.
- review and approve any changes to the structure of the game schedule.
The Board of Governors meets twice per year, in the months of June and December, with the exact date and place to be fixed by the Commissioner.
Executives
The chief executive of the league isCommissioner Gary Bettman. Some of the principal decision makers who serve under the authority of the commissioner include:
- Deputy Commissioner & Chief Legal Officer:Bill Daly
- Executive VP & CFO: Craig Harnett
- Chief Operating Officer: John Collins
- Executive VP & Director of Hockey Operations: Colin Campbell
- NHL Enterprises: Ed Horne
- Senior Vice-President of Player Safety:Stephane Quintal
Teams
The NHL consists of 31 teams, 24 of which are based in the United States and seven in Canada. The NHL divides the 31 teams into two conferences: the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference. Each conference is split into two divisions: the Eastern Conference contains 16 teams (eight per division), while the Western Conference has 15 teams (seven in the Central Division and eight in the Pacific Division). The current alignment has existed since the 2017–18 season.
The number of NHL teams held constant at 30 teams from the 2000–01 season when theMinnesota Wild and the Columbus Blue Jackets joined the league as expansion teams, until 2017. That expansion capped a period in the 1990s of rapid expansion and relocation when the NHL added 9 teams to grow from 21 to 30 teams, and relocated four teams mostly from smaller northern cities (e.g., Hartford, Quebec) to larger warmer metropolitan areas (e.g., Dallas, Phoenix). The league has not contracted any teams since the Cleveland Barons folded in 1978. The league expanded for the first time in 17 years[69] to 31 teams in 2017 with the addition of the Vegas Golden Knights.[48]
According to Forbes, in 2017, all five of the most valuable teams were "Original Six" teams: the New York Rangers at approximately $1.5 billion, the Toronto Maple Leafs at $1.4 billion, the Montreal Canadiensat $1.25 billion, the Chicago Blackhawks at $1 billion, and the Boston Bruins at $890 million.[70] At least eight NHL clubs, however, operate at a loss. The NHL is also susceptible to the Canadian–U.S. exchange rate: revenue from tickets, local and national advertising in Canada, and local and national Canadian media rights are collected inCanadian dollars, but all players' salaries are paid in U.S. dollars regardless of whether a team is located in Canada or the U.S.[70]
List of teams
- Notes
- An asterisk (*) denotes a franchise move. See the respective team articles for more information.
- The Edmonton Oilers, Hartford Whalers (now Carolina Hurricanes), Quebec Nordiques (now Colorado Avalanche), and original Winnipeg Jets (now Arizona Coyotes) all joined the NHL in 1979 as part of the NHL–WHA merger.
Timeline
Game
NHL logo, used from 1946 until 2005
Each National Hockey League regulation game is 60 minutes long. The game is composed of three 20-minute periods with an intermission between periods.[72] At the end of regulation time, the team with the most goals wins the game. If a game is tied after regulation time, overtime ensues. During the regular season, overtime is a five-minute, three-on-three sudden-death period, in which whoever scores a goal first will win the game.
Los Angeles Kings' Mike Weaver clearing the puck away from Calgary Flames'Daymond Langkow, December 21, 2005.
If the game is still tied at the end of overtime, the game enters a shootout. Three players for each team in turn take a penalty shot. The team with the most goals during the three-round shootout wins the game. If the game is still tied after the three shootout rounds, the shootout continues but becomes sudden-death. Whichever team ultimately wins the shootout is awarded a goal in the game score and thus awarded two points in the standings. The losing team in overtime or shootout is awarded only one.[73] Shootout goals and saves are not tracked in hockey statistics; shootout statistics are tracked separately.
There are no shootouts during the playoffs. Instead, multiple sudden-death, 20-minute five-on-five periods are played until one team scores. Two games have reached six overtime periods, but none have gone beyond six.[74] During playoff overtime periods, the only break is to clean the loose ice at the first stoppage after the period is halfway finished.[75]
Hockey rink
Diagram of an NHL hockey rink:
- penalty boxes
- team benches
- scorekeepers' area
National Hockey League games are played on a rectangular hockey rink with rounded corners surrounded by walls and Plexiglas. It measures 200 feet (60.96 m) by 85 feet (25.91 m) in the NHL,[76] approximately the same length but much narrower thanInternational Ice Hockey Federationstandards. The centre line divides the ice in half,[77] and is used to judge icing violations. There are two blue lines that divide the rink roughly into thirds, delineating one neutral and two attacking zones.[77] Near the end of both ends of the rink, there is a thin red goal linespanning the width of the ice, which is used to judge goals and icing calls.
A trapezoidal area behind each goal net has been introduced.[78] The goaltender can play the puck only within the trapezoid or in front of the goal line; if the goaltender plays the puck behind the goal line and outside the trapezoidal area, a two-minute minor penalty for delay of game is assessed.[79] The rule is unofficially nicknamed the "Martin Brodeurrule".[80][81][82][83]
Since the 2013–14 season, the league trimmed the goal frames by 4 inches (10 cm) on each side and reduced the size of the goalies' leg pads.[84]
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