Ice Hockey and It's existence

In the internet we meet some really great people, Among those great people that i have meet is Matthew and he is my very first guest blogger, His site is Meltwater. Torrents. Meanderings. Delta. and this really is a top quality website. You really must check it out. There are different kinds of sports that men like that i am not familiar with and i want to cover them here in my site and thats where Matthew came in.
Here's Matthew's post, Enjoy.....

Dave is out of town this week and he asked me to write a guest post on a sport most New Zealanders are probably not all that familiar with: HOCKEY.

Basically, Ice hockey is played on a large flat area of ice, using a three inch rubber disc called a puck. This puck is often frozen before games to decrease the amount of bouncing and friction on the ice. The game is played between two teams of skaters, with only 6 skaters on the ice at any one time, including the goalie. A game consists of three twenty-minute periods. Each team has a net to defend at one end of the ice, protected by a goalie. The goal of the game is simple: score as many goals as possible by shooting the puck into the opposing team’s net. Whoever has the most goals at the end of the game wins. Ties are decided by 5 minute overtime periods, or after three overtimes, a shoot-out. The game is played all over North America, Europe and in many other countries around the world and in the Winter Olympics. Hockey is the most popular sport in Canada and in Finland.

The origins of hockey aren’t quite clear as there were early variations and reports of hockey-type games being played on ice in the Netherlands, and reports from Canada from the beginning of the nineteenth century, but the game as we know it today was initially organized by students at McGill University in Montreal in 1875, who codified the first set of ice hockey rules and organized the first teams.

The Original Six is a well-known term for the six teams which comprised the National Hockey League (NHL) for the 25 seasons between the 1942-43 NHL season and the 1967 NHL Expansion. The name is something of a misnomer, since there were other NHL franchises which went defunct before 1942.

Only two of the six teams were members of the NHL in the inaugural 1917 season; but when the glory years of professional hockey are discussed and hockey fans reverently bow their heads in awe, they are usually discussing the early exploits of an Original Six team

The Original Six teams are:

• The Montreal Canadiens, founded in 1909, charter member of NHL in 1917

• The Toronto Maple Leafs, founded in 1917, and was renamed Maple Leafs in 1927

• The Boston Bruins, founded in 1924

• The New York Rangers, founded in 1925

• The Detroit Red Wings, founded in 1925

• The Chicago Blackhawks, founded in 1926

All of the Original Six franchises are still in existence.

Each season, teams in the NHL compete in a regular season to earn a spot in the playoffs for the right to contend for the Stanley Cup Championship. The Stanley Cup is the oldest and most prestigious trophy in sports. It is awarded annually to the NHL Champion. It is commonly referred to as The Cup, The Holy Grail, or facetiously (chiefly by sportswriters) as Lord Stanley's Mug. Originally inscribed the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup, the trophy was donated by former Governor General of Canada Lord Stanley of Preston in 1892 as an award for Canada's top-ranking amateur ice hockey club. In 1915, the two professional ice hockey organizations, the National Hockey Association (NHA) and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA), reached an agreement in which their respective champions would face each other for the Stanley Cup. After a series of league mergers and folds, it became the de facto championship trophy of the NHL in 1926. The Cup later became the NHL championship prize in 1947.

The Stanley Cup is surrounded by numerous legends and traditions, the oldest of which is the celebratory drinking of champagne out of the cup by the winning team. Unlike the trophies awarded by the other three major professional sports leagues of North America, a new Stanley Cup is not made each year; Cup winners keep it until a new champion is crowned. It is the only trophy in professional sports that has the name of the winning players, coaches, management, and club staff engraved on it.

There are many traditions associated with the Stanley Cup. One of the oldest, started by the 1896 Winnipeg Victorias, dictates that the winning team drink champagne from the top bowl after their victory. The Cup is also traditionally presented on the ice to the captain of the winning team after the series-winning game; each member of the victorious club carries the trophy around the rink. However, this has not always been the case. Prior to the 1930s, the Cup was not awarded immediately after the victory. The first time that the Cup was awarded on the ice may have been to the 1932 Toronto Maple Leafs, but the practice did not become a tradition until the 1950s. Ted Lindsay of the 1950 Cup champion Detroit Red Wings became the first captain, upon receiving the Cup, to hoist it over his head and skate around the rink. Since then, it has been a tradition for each member of the winning team, beginning with the captain, to take a lap around the ice with the cup.

This tradition was slightly modified by Joe Sakic and Ray Bourque when the Colorado Avalanche won the Cup in 2001. Bourque had, until requesting a trade on March 6, 2000, only ever played for the Boston Bruins. The seventh game of the 2001 Finals was the last of Bourque's 22-year NHL career, having never been on a Cup-winning team until that time. When Sakic received the trophy, he did not hoist it, but instead immediately handed it to Bourque. Sakic then followed Bourque in hoisting the trophy.

Another notable exception was in 1998, after the Detroit Red Wings had defeated the Washington Capitals to win the Stanley Cup. Red Wings captain Steve Yzerman was presented the cup by Commissioner Gary Bettman and immediately passed it to Vladimir Konstantinov, who had been seriously injured in a limo accident the previous year. Usually, the captain is the first member of the team to hoist the Cup. In reverence for the Cup, NHL players will not touch it until they hoist it after winning the playoffs.

Although many players have unofficially spent a day in personal possession of the Cup, in 1995 a tradition started wherein each member of the Cup-winning team is allowed to retain the Cup for a day. It is always accompanied by at least one representative from the Hockey Hall of Fame. Victors of the Cup have used it to baptize their children. Two players (the New York Islanders' Clark Gillies and the Anaheim Ducks' Sean O'Donnell) even allowed their dogs to eat out of the Cup. And there are other anecdotes and stories to tell, but that is for another time.

Thanks for reading.

Matthew S. Urdan
Meltwater. Torrents. Meanderings. Delta.