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The History of hockey
This unique sport of using a stick and a hard rubber puck has pretty unique history going back as far as 17th and 18th century England. In the Irish term it was coined as ‘hockie’, and over time it’s made its way to what it is today. The sport over time had acquired a pretty high charged and chaotic competitive side. Whole villages would play against each other and according to what was noted in history it was an expression of pride and manhood and up to 100 people would participate in the games played. The game would last nearly 2 months and it resulted in many people getting seriously hurt and injured.
The umpire (don’t know why they used this term which is normally addressed in baseball) would only make calls when the team requested the umpire to do so and they were basically mute spectators. Later ‘umpires’ became referees, which is the common term used in the sport of hockey. After a few years and some advancements in the sport with the implementation revising the rules and that’s when it was limited to 30 players per team when modern day NHL hockey teams have a total of 22 players that are sent out in increments of 6 players.
The first real hockey organization kind of like a prototype to what is known as the NHL (National Hockey League) in today’s terms began around 1875 when Eton College had been the originators of the official rules (regulations in NHL speak) to bring order and maintain sanity in the game which was the setting for the modernized rules and regulations that the NHL currently uses to this day. The early form of rules actually drew on the idea of giving the referee more authority to make calls during a game, which made the game a lot more organized and improved the quality of how the game is played. The whole sport of hockey has been through a transformation in terms of how its development is concerned. Fast-forward to today and hockey is played under strict regulations and guidelines, which goes across the board for all the teams in the NHL.
The National Hockey League (NHL) was founded in 1917 so the league has only been active for 100 years as of November 16th, 2007 when the anniversary of its establishment is commemorated. The league actually started with a group of small expansion teams out of Canada, and it wasn’t until the 1920s that the United States had entered the league since the Boston Bruins hosted the Montreal Canadians in the first official game on American soil. Since then the league has grown to a total of 30 pro teams and that doesn’t count the expansion teams that are established and growing as new teams forms over time. The league went through lots of changes beginning with a handful of Canadian teams and it’s since grown into 30 teams across the United States and Canada for the past 100 years.
The teams and their regulations had changed in the last 100 years with new requirements for drafting and regulations throughout the league for each team. Teams today are more likely to recruit new players from colleges, universities, and minor league teams. The way the draft worked before was that they allowed walk-ons and that was more than 25 years ago so standards of the draft has changed since then with the exception is that they don’t accept everyone and records are what play a huge part in the scout’s decision to offer a spot on the team.
