Score!: The Action and Artistry of Hockey's Magnificent Moment
One LIGHTING THE LAMP THE HISTORY OF GOAL SCORING f modern hockey fans were transported back in time more than a century ago many things about the sport would puzzle them For instance there was no netting to catch the puck behind the goal And there were no boards behind the netting to catch the players No one thought of using a red light to signal that a goal had been scored Indeed it would be many years before players could actually light the lamp Hockey first became popular in Canada in the 1870s and 1880s At first lacrosse stars made the sport their winter game Lacrosse was the number one sport in Canada at the time Soon hockey was being played all over the country Eventually it moved south to the United States Hockey in the 1800s looked very different There were no ice making machines back then so teams relied on cold weather to create their playing surfaces Crude rinks were built over frozen rivers and ponds Spectators sat or stood nearby behind sideboards that were only a foot or so tall The hockey season ended in the spring That is when pucks started disappearing into holes in the ice This illustration from 1893 shows two teams playing in front of a large crowd at Victoria Arena in Montreal Canada Notice that the goal does not have a
Like the modern game the point of hockey in its early days was to score goals But scoring was not always the most important part of the day Hockey games were great social occasions Young men and women would spend the time between periods eating drinking and getting to know one another Then the young men would skate back onto the ice and continue the game The game itself was played very differently too In Canada teams usually had seven players to a side There was a goalie two point men or defensemen three forwards and a rover Modern teams have six players a side The rover no longer exists He was a versatile player who did many different jobs for his team Usually he skated to the place on the ice where he was needed most The job of the point men was to capture the puck Then they would flip it as high as they could toward the other end of the rink The forwards would wait for the puck to come down and then try to slap it toward the goal If the defense stopped the shot or intercepted the pass the puck would be flipped high in the 8 SCORE
air in the opposite direction The point men sometimes moved very little in early contests The poor forwards by contrast spent the entire game skating up and down the rink Despite all the differences the way goals are scored has never changed A skater still tries to smack the puck into an opening at the mouth of the goal The goalie job is to stop the shot Sometimes it is a game of cat and mouse Offensive players attempt to outguess defenders until the instant the shot is taken In this case the goalie must hold his ground until he knows for sure who is taking the shot He must also be ready if an opponent tries to deflect or redirect a teammate s shot And even if a goalie is able to block a shot he must pounce on the puck immediately Many goals are scored on these rebounds The shots used during the early days of hockey were almost identical to modern shots That s because a hard accurate shot has always been a goal scorer s most important weapon The one shot that old time players did not use was a big slap shot It didn't become part of the game until the 1950s However players have been slapping shots at the net with tremendous speed for more than one hundred years They just didn t wind up the way current players do Early stars like Harry Trihey Haviland Routh Harry Smith and Russell Bowie all had powerful shots They set the stage for the great goal scorers to come How did pro hockey get its start During the 1880s players started forming the first teams and leagues Hockey soon became popular enough for organized teams to pay players Before that hockey had been an amateur sport Players took the ice simply for the love of the game When teams started selling tickets to games they could afford to pay the best players A top scorer could earn many times more than an erage worker So the best players made hockey their job When players began scoring goals for a living they worked even harder at their craft As a result their skill level rose quickly Talented stickhandlers like Joe Malone and Odie Cleghorn could work their way past several opponents and then Lighting the lamp
