Celebrating Hockey's History The Original 6 Table of Contents 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 The NHL at 100 In the Beginning The Stanley Cup Big Bad Bruins Boston by the Numbers Black White and Gold On Home Ice Boston’s Best Great Goalies Trophy Winners Behind the Bench Bruins Bits and Pieces Wild Rivals Glossary Further Reading and Websites to Check Out Test Your Bruins Knowledge Places to Go and About the Author 31 Index 32 30
The NHL at 100 Charles Francis Adams had a dream His dream was a team a professional hockey club in Boston Massachusetts that would compete with the best of them in the National Hockey League NHL He made that dream happen in record time buying a franchise hiring an ace coach and manager and building a team All this happened within just a few months in 1924 Boston Joins the NHL Charles Adams owned a chain of grocery stores and he loved hockey In 1924 Adams attended the Stanley Cup Finals in Montreal that pitted the Canadiens against the Calgary Tigers Adams decided that his home town of Boston needed an NHL team So he paid 15,000 and bought the rights His team the Boston Bruins hit the ice for their first official league game on Dec 1 1924 The Boston Bruins played their very first game on November 27 1924 It was an exhibition game against the Saskatoon Sheiks of the Western Canada Hockey League The Bruins lost 2 1 Boston Bruins 1929-30 4
Boston played its first regular-season game on December 1 1924 They defeated another new NHL expansion team the Montreal Maroons 2-1 Victoria rink in 1893 And Then There Was a Trophy Hockey History The NHL was formed just seven years earlier in November 1917 For its first six seasons all the teams were based in Canadian cities When the league began to think about expanding into the United States the long history of hockey in Boston made it an obvious choice Of course the history of hockey itself began long before the NHL People have played hockey-like games with balls and sticks since ancient times Some writers claim that the first organized ice hockey games were played on ponds in Nova Scotia in 1800 That’s just a hop skip and long jump away from Boston where schools soon organized teams in the late 1800s Others say the first indoor hockey game on record was held at the Victoria Skating Rink in Montreal in 1875 Victoria Rink was also the location of the first Stanley Cup Playoffs in 1894 More than 20,000 people attend Stanley Cup Finals today Another three million may watch it on television Back in 1893 the cup was first presented at a meeting of the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association It’s not likely that many people attended Hockey’s Holy Grail was the brainchild of Canada’s Governor-General Lord Stanley of Preston He bought and donated a trophy to the winner of the amateur competition Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup Over time the cup became the top award for professional hockey 5
