Early Evolution of the Hockey Stick

We recently looked at the increase in hockey goal-scoring from 1892 to 1911, and hypothesized a reason for it. I wanted to go back a bit now, to look at another, rather more dramatic, increase in goal-scoring over time. I'll posit a hypothesis to explain this one as well.

First, to the facts. Organized hockey tournaments began with the 1883 Montreal Winter Carnival, which was won by McGill, and also featured only 1.13 goals scored per team per game. Such low scoring rates continued in the 1884 and 1885 Winter Carnivals, and the 1886 Montreal hockey championship (held due to the lack of a Carnival that year). In 1887, between the Winter Carnival games and challenge matches of the newly-formed Amateur Hockey Association of Canada (AHAC), over two goals were scored per game, and starting in 1888 is was substantially higher than that, generally approaching three per game. The data is here:

Season	GPG
1883	1.13
1884	1.43
1885	1.17
1886	1.18
1887	2.09
1888	2.88
1889	2.79
1890	2.93
1891	2.50
1892	3.14
1893	3.88
1894	3.03

Something clearly changed around 1887, and as well already know, it's nothing to do with the roles players played on the ice. My hypothesis is that it is largely to do with something that can be seen by comparing portraits of the Montreal AAA hockey teams from 1885 and 1893. First the 1885 club:

And now the 1893 players. Take note of the long wooden items in their hands.

The sticks are noticeably longer. The 1885 sticks seem more like field hockey sticks, and required players to hunch over quite a bit when stickhandling. The 1893 sticks, while still short by modern standards, are a fair  bit longer and the blades more closely resemble modern ones as well. I believe that the additional length of stick made stickhandling and shooting that much more accurate, and as such scoring increased all around.

By spending some time with some old hockey photos and a ruler, I came up with some estimates of the length of hockey sticks at various points in early history. We know that for the 1927/28 season, the NHL instituted a rule that sticks would be no longer than 53 inches, measured from the top of the handle to the heel of the blade. In earlier years, sticks were shorter than this, apparently increasing in length fairly steadily over time, except for a noticeable jump somewhere between 1885 and 1893.

In 1885, hockey sticks were about 33 to 35 inches, measured from the top of the handle to the heel of the blade.

In 1893, they were about 42 to 46 inches.

In 1901, they were about 44 to 49 inches.

In 1910, they were about 46 to 52 inches.

As an illustration of these differences, here are some badly-drawn hockey stick shapes:

So it seems to me that hockey sticks likely became substantially longer around 1887, and this in turn led to dramatically increased scoring as players were provided a much greater ability to control the puck, both on a rush and in a shot. Competing ideas are welcomed.

Thoughts on Hockey's Origins

If you follow hockey history, you'll know that there's often been a lively debate about the "birthplace" of hockey. Several locales in Canada have laid their claims to this honour, amongst them Montreal, Kingston, Halifax and Windsor, Nova Scotia. These claims all have varying degrees of evidence supporting them (Windsor, for example, bases its claim on a passage in a work of fiction which is misrepresented as a "memoir"), but nothing has ever really been resolved. It always strikes me that part of the reason for the conflict is that people don't really define what they mean by "hockey" when they want to claim their home town as its birthplace.

Hockey can mean a number of things. Its original usage simply meant the activity of hitting a thing with a stick, and also referred to the stick with which you hit the thing. No ice need be involved, nor skates, nor teams. So finding a reference to "hockey" in the 17th century isn't enough to establish that hockey, as we know it today, was played then. You need more than that. That didn't stop the Fostys from making that mistake, of course. If you're going to quote a source talking about "hockey", you need to make sure they mean what you mean by the term. Otherwise any analysis is moot.

I have previously defined hockey (adding the qualifier "modern" for extra clarity) as follows:

Modern hockey is a competitive game that is played on an ice rink by two teams made up of an equal number of players wearing skates, who play using a codified set of rules, and use sticks to try to propel a puck though their opponents' goal.

I still don't know if that's a sufficient definition or not. By modern hockey, I want to mean the earliest formalized version of the game that we can trace back directly from the version of the game we know today. Some historians, when advocating for a particular birthplace of hockey, will argue that the current game we know, and the informal game mid-19th century folks played on their ponds and rivers, are the same thing.

I can't agree with that, since even today we have two separate words to describe these games: hockey and shinny. If informal games of hockey played on natural ice are the very same thing as the hockey played in the NHL, then why do we have a seperate term for the outdoor game? Any line you draw between "modern" hockey and "pre-modern" hockey will be at least somewhat arbitrary, but the delineation between modern, organized hockey and simple, informal hockey does seem appropriate. At the very least, it might help people to stop talking past each other when discussing the origins of the game.

The only thing that might approach general agreement among hockey historians is that the modern, organized version of hockey has its roots in Montreal, with the game played on March 3, 1875, organized by Halifax native James Creighton and played between two sides of nine men apiece, which a 2002 report by the Society for International Hockey Research calls "the earliest eyewitness account known ... of a specific game of hockey in a specific place at a specific time, and with a recorded score, between two identified teams." But I'm not sure that even this is sufficient to be recognized as "modern" hockey. The main differentiator between this game and earlier ones is that it was played indoors in the Victoria Skating Rink, rather than simply on a frozen lake, pond or river.

I've been of a mind lately that 1883 may be a better date for the beginnings of modern hockey, with the first Montreal Winter Carnival Tournament, which was arguably the first truly competitive hockey event. That is, I think "competitive" is a very important aspect of the definition of modern hockey, which is why informal games of shinny on frozen ponds should not be considered "modern" hockey.

Of course, just because something isn't modern, doesn't mean it's not important. I'm certainly not advocating that modern hockey is the only game we need concern ourselves with. I'm just trying to add a little perspective to the discussion, to help it along. You can't discuss the origins of hockey without first defining what you mean by hockey, and that crucial first step is often omitted entirely.

The Quality of Pre-Stanley Cup Hockey (Part 2)

In the first post discussing the quality of pre-Stanley Cup hockey, we noted that it was not a gentlemanly game played in a friendly fashion by the upper crust, but a rough-and-tumble affair played by men of all stripes. This time we examine the idea that the Stanley Cup gave the players something to strive for, giving them incentive to play hard, and play longer, in an effort to win the ultimate prize.

Something to Play For

Some argue that before the Stanley Cup, teams did not have anything to play for. As such they treated the game more as a pastime than a competition.

This argument is false. The first Amateur Hockey Association of Canada (AHAC) season was in 1887, and the association named a champion at the end of each season. Before the AHAC was formed, the Montreal Winter Carnival (which started in 1883) served to determine the champion team for the season. When the Carnival was cancelled in 1886, the teams decided to hold tournament amongst themselves to determine a champion.

Just because the Stanley Cup was not there did not mean there was no championship to be won. The Stanley Cup is viewed as the be-all and end-all in hockey by modern eyes, but that was simply not the case in its early years. It was highly prized, but other championships were important as well. In 1901, the Ottawa team, new champions of the Canadian Amateur Hockey League (CAHL, the direct descendant of the AHAC), declined to challenge Winnipeg for the Stanley Cup even though they would have had at least an even shot of taking it. They had just won a hard battle for the league championship, and decided that was enough for them; the Stanley Cup was not worth it that year.

If anything should be viewed as giving teams something to play for, it should be the Winter Carnival Tournament. It was that event that really sparked the growth of competition in Montreal, and led directly to the establishment of the Ottawa Hockey Club in 1883.

In the last post there was a game report excerpt about how the Quebec team never lost courage even in the face of unfavourable odds against them. This is not the description of a team out for a skate. Courage is not needed when undertaking a pastime. This is a team doing their utmost to win out against their opponents, trying even when it seemed the game had already been lost.

Player Turnover

Some argue that since few pre-Stanley Cup players continued to play in the post-Stanley Cup years, this demonstrates a significant increase in the quality of competition. Players who played before were allegedly now unable to compete.

This argument misses a very basic fact about hockey at the time: almost all players had very short careers, by modern standards. As players got into their late 20s, family and other responsibilities often came into play, meaning they had less time to devote to getting their shins whacked by sturdy pieces of wood. This trend continued into the early professional era. Here are some notable players from this era, and the age at which they played their last senior-level game:

Barlow, Billy: 26

Bowie, Russell: 27

Drinkwater, Graham: 24

Farrell, Art: 24

Grant, Mike: 28

Jordan, Herb: 26

McDougall, Bob: 22

McGee, Frank: 23

McKerrow, Clare: 22

Routh, Havilland: 25

Russel, Blair: 27

Scanlan, Fred: 25

Trihey, Harry: 23

Walsh, Marty: 27

With players retiring so early, it is unsurprising that few of them would be in the same league in X number of years, since they have so few years in their career to begin with. As such, even if few players who were playing in 1890 are still playing in 1895, this does not mean the quality of competition necessarily increased, because the same can be said for 1895 compared to 1900.

To demonstrate this, I examined several pairs of seasons. For each season, I noted which regular players (i.e., those playing at least half of their team's games) were still regular players five seasons later. I did this in two-year intervals. The results are below.

1888 to 1893: 7 players (Hodgson, McQuisten, McDonnell, Camerson, Stewart, Paton, Patton)

1890 to 1895: 5 players (Cameron, Brown, Watson, Davidson, Jones)

1892 to 1897: 4 players (Brown, Scott, Young, Watson)

1894 to 1899: 8 players (Kirby, Watson, Young, Brown, Elliott, Grant, Collins, Stocking)

1896 to 1901: 4 players (Stocking, Westwick, Cahill, Pulford)

1898 to 1903: 2 players (Westwick, Pulford)

1900 to 1905: 5 players (Bowie, Russel, Hogan, Boon, Pulford)

The average number of players is five, and there is no pattern here. Therefore the observed player turnover after the Stanley Cup came into play was merely the normal amount of player turnover for this era. This rate continued on after the Cup was introduced.

In the end, the idea that the Stanley Cup is the be-all and end-all of hockey is a modern one, and was not shared at the time it was introduced. It was certainly a big deal, even from the beginning, but did not produce any additional motivation for players to play the game. The players were already trying their best to be the best; they did not need another silver bowl to spur them on.