History of ice hockey
Like almost all team sports, ice hockey has its origins in English-speaking countries, in this case in what was then the English Canada , which regards itself as the “mother country”. However, comparable sports existed in Central Europe long before the colonization of the North American continent.
Emergence
The sport is not based on targeted planning, but on a development that spanned centuries, so that a place of invention cannot in fact be determined, but there are a number of milestones. In spite of this situation, Canada claims to be the birthplace, in particular a meeting on March 3, 1875 in the Victoria Skating Rink in Montreal is cited .
Forerunners in Europe, beginnings in Canada
There have been ball games on the ice in Europe at least since the Renaissance. For example, handed down on a painting by Jan van Goyen (1596–1656).
There were also ball games on the North American continent. The French colonization of Canada in the middle of the 16th century is said to have mixed Indian ball games with those of the soldiers in what is now known as lacrosse . Nevertheless, lacrosse cannot be seen as a direct precursor to ice hockey, as goals were required , but no ice skates or goalkeepers . The Camburca , a crook, developed into a kind of hockey or ice hockey stick. The name for the stick , hockey , developed from French and means something like "crooked stick". During the British rule in Canada in the mid-18th century, the soldiers brought the games hurling and Shinty , also known as Shinney, with them. It is known that in 1856 the Royal Canadian Rifles , a British regiment, learned to skate on the frozen docks of Kingston and Halifax and very quickly transferred their Shinney game to the ice. At first only the soldiers played, but students from Montreal joined them and developed fixed rules of the game. The new game quickly became very popular.
From Shinney to ice hockey
McGill University students developed the Shinney decisively towards ice hockey as they were the first to use a goalkeeper.
A large number of historians now agree on many points in the development and creation of the McGill Report, which was written and published in 1943 by experts from McGill University. The McGill Report described that on March 3, 1875, the first ice hockey game was played in a hall in front of almost 500 spectators at the Victoria Skating Rink in Montréal . This report also mentions the later puck , whose name is said to have originated in Montréal, for the first time. The puck was invented by William Fleet Robertson . Since in one of the first games the "rubber ball" used at that time kept jumping over the outer boundary and the game was interrupted, Robertson simply cut off the upper and lower part and the puck remained. The McGill students also introduced referees and jerseys, had a fixed set of rules and founded the world's first ice hockey club.
McGill student James Creighton had the largest share in the advancement of ice hockey. He thought up a lot of innovations to make the game more interesting. The teams played with land hockey sticks, he took over some rules from the rugby game and had the idea that you could also play indoors. The rules of the time called for nine men per team, so that the team consisted of a goalkeeper, two defenders, two midfielders and four strikers. Two referees ensured compliance with the rules.
The game developed almost independently. The red line was introduced and the goalkeepers were equipped with appropriate protective equipment - leather gloves and greaves from field hockey were taken over. Later the blue lines were introduced to prevent “accumulations” in front of the opposing goal.
Many of the early rules still apply today, for example the face-off in the middle ( face-off ) at the start of the game and after goals. Also, no player was allowed to attack the opponent from behind, lift his racket above shoulder height, hold it, kick or kick it.
In 1884 the rules were changed so that the teams were reduced from nine to seven. The teams now consisted of a goalkeeper, two defenders, a midfielder and three strikers. So it was in 1885 in the first league game operation in ice hockey, also in Canada.
Beginnings in Europe
At the end of the 19th century, ice hockey quickly replaced many similar games and took their place, in particular the puck instead of the ball was the most important innovation. On February 4, 1887, the first ice hockey game (Canadian style) took place on the Halensee in Berlin German soil. ( See also: Ice hockey in Germany )
The first artificial ice rink was opened in London in 1876, followed by one in New York and the first on the European mainland in Frankfurt am Main in 1881 , and probably the third in the world after London and New York.
Johann Felix Unsöld (1852–1931), engineer and inventor of pig ice production, built Germany's first artificial indoor ice rink in Munich in 1882 . It was called Schachterleis due to its small size of 38 by 15 meters and the construction, which resembled a small box . Unsöld was able to use the ice rink to utilize the machines in his ice factory even in winter. As early as 1913, Munich was the venue for the fourth European ice hockey championship in the ice arena. The tournament was played on Unsöld's ice rink from January 25th to 27th with the participation of four teams : Belgium , which won the tournament, Bohemia , Austria , and Germany .
The artificial ice stadium in Montreal was only opened in 1899, the artificial ice rink in the Berlin Sports Palace only in 1925.
An organization soon became necessary in Canada in order to be able to cope with the spread of the sport and to ensure regular gaming operations. For this purpose, the Ontario Hockey Association was founded in November 1890 . Others followed: Pacific Coast Hockey Association , National Hockey Association (1909) and Canadian Amateur Hockey Association .
From the beginning of the 20th century, the ice hockey game found its way to Europe, so that in 1903, the London Canadians, a national ice hockey champion was crowned for the first time on the European continent and the first league was formed. In the same year there was also the first international game in Europe between teams from London and Paris. In the following years ice hockey associations were founded across Europe and ice hockey was accepted into national ice sports associations (in Germany 1908).
Important for international ice hockey was on 15./16. May 1908 the founding of the LIHG, the Ligue Internationale de Hockey sur Glace , which later became the International Ice Hockey Federation IIHF and whose founding members were the associations of France, Bohemia, Great Britain, Belgium and Switzerland. The LIHG organized regular European championships from 1910 and also its own LIHG championship from 1910 to 1914, which was of little importance.
For the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp , ice hockey was included in the Olympic program, but only as a demonstration tournament. At the Olympic ice hockey tournaments and the ice hockey world championships that took place from 1920 on, the North Americans, especially the Canadians, dominated the game, who traveled to the tournaments with their best amateur team and often outclassed the European teams by double digits. The fact that a European team became Olympic champion for the first time with Great Britain at the Olympic Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1936 was primarily due to the fact that the team consisted exclusively of naturalized Canadians. The first real European world champion did not come about until the ice hockey world championship in 1947 with Czechoslovakia.
Meanwhile, ice hockey developed in the Soviet Union in the 1940s , where the first Soviet championship took place in 1947 . After the Soviet Union re-entered the IIHF in 1952, it took part in the World Championships for the first time in 1954 and was able to dominate them as well as the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo . This dominance led to a Soviet winning streak in which the "Sbornaja" (Russian: Сборная for the national team) from 1963 to 1972 was able to win all international ice hockey titles. The fact that the Canadians were mostly inferior to the Soviet team was also due to the fact that only amateurs, not professional players, were allowed to participate in world championships and Olympic tournaments. So the Canadians continued to compete with their best amateur players. The Soviet national players, however, mostly played at HK CSKA Moscow or HK Dynamo Moscow , the army or police sports club, so that the players were officially employed as soldiers or police officers, but could mainly devote themselves to ice hockey.
The scandal came in 1969/1970 after the IIHF had repeatedly refused the participation of NHL professionals and Canada did not take part in the World Championships up to and including 1976 for this reason. At the Ice Hockey World Championship in 1977 , however, the Canadians came back to the international ice after NHL professionals were allowed to participate. Nevertheless, at the World Cup in Vienna it was only enough to finish fourth, which was unsatisfactory for the Canadians.
See also
- Ice hockey in modern times in the individual country articles z. B. Ice hockey in Germany
- Origin of the ice hockey leagues in the individual articles z. B. National Hockey League (NHL) or German Ice Hockey League (DEL)
literature
- Horst Eckert: Ice Hockey World History . Copress, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-7679-0235-4 .
- Stephan Müller: International Ice Hockey Encyclopedia 1904-2005 / BoD GmbH Norderstedt, 2005, ISBN 3-8334-4189-5 .
