I want you to imagine for just a second that
you have this incredibly annoying coworker. Oh,
I think we've all been there. Right. I'm talking
about someone so difficult, so just utterly impossible
to communicate with that the mere thought of
seeing them in the morning makes you want to
pull your hair out. Sounds awful. It is. Now,
how far would you go to get rid of them? Like,
would you change your commute? Maybe ask for
a transfer. Yeah, exactly. Or and bear with me
here. Would you and the rest of your colleagues
dissolve your entire company just to immediately
start a brand new one across the street? Just
to get away from them. Just to leave that one
specific person behind. I mean, it sounds like
the plot of some absurd workplace comedy. Yeah.
A scenario that could never actually happen in
the cutthroat world of major business. You would
think so. But the historical sources we're unpacking
for this deep dive show us that truth is, well...
it's often far stranger than fiction. Oh, absolutely.
Because that extreme, totally spite -driven scenario
is exactly how the National Hockey League, the
NHL, was actually born back in November 1917.
It really is wild when you look at the records.
Yeah. Today we have this fascinating stack of
historical archives, firsthand accounts, and
league records covering the inaugural 1917 to
1918 NHL season. We are looking at an era when
professional hockey was miles away from the polished
you know, heavily regulated billion -dollar enterprise
you see today. Night and day difference. The
infrastructure was fragile. The rules were totally
in flux. And the personalities, well, they were
incredibly volatile. So our mission today is
to extract the most chaotic, dramatic, and frankly
unbelievable nuggets from this inaugural season.
We want to show you that the massive sports leagues
of the modern era, they started out as absolute
Wild West spectacles. That is an understatement.
Okay, let's unpack this. Take us back to the
fall of 1917. The NHL Doesn't exist yet, right?
It doesn't. We have the National Hockey Association
or the NHA. What was the catalyst that brought
that whole thing crashing down? Well, the NHA
had a localized yet catastrophic problem. And
his name was Eddie Livingston. The annoying co
-worker. Exactly. He was the owner of the Toronto
NHA franchise, the Blue Shirts. And by all historical
accounts, the other team owners universally despised
him. Just absolutely hated the guy. They found
him completely impossible to negotiate with.
He was constantly threatening lawsuits, generally
acting in bad faith. But the NHA owners faced
this massive structural hurdle. Which was their
own rule book, basically. Yes, their constitution.
It did not contain any legal mechanism to force
an owner to sell. Wow. Or to kick an owner out
of the league. So they were legally tethered
to a man they couldn't stand. So they needed
a loophole. Like, if they couldn't vote him off
the island, they had to sink the island themselves.
That's essentially it. They realized their only
option was to quietly pack their bags and leave.
Sneak out the back door. Literally. The other
owners held a series of secret meetings, deliberately
keeping Livingstone in the dark. Their plan was
to simply suspend the NAJ and form a brand new
league, the National Hockey League, without inviting
him. But they couldn't just cleanly shut down
the old NHA, could they? I know there was some
serious legal baggage keeping that old league
technically alive on paper. That is one of the
most bizarre details from hockey historian Maury
Holzman's records. The NHA owners couldn't officially
dissolve the corporation because they were facing
a pending lawsuit from, of all things, a military
regiment. Wait, the 228th Battalion? The 228th
Battalion, yeah. A military battalion was suing
a hockey league. I mean, how does that even happen?
Well, the 228th Battalion had actually fielded
a professional hockey team in the NHA during
the previous syndrome. It was a recruitment tool.
Oh, that makes sense. But midway through the
schedule, they were abruptly ordered overseas
to the trenches of World War I. Right in the
middle of the season. Yeah, and their departure
wreaked havoc on the NHA schedule, which led
to disputes and eventually a lawsuit. So the
NHA owners... Carified of the legal liability,
simply voted to suspend operations of the NHA
for a year. So they put it on ice, literally.
Pretty much. They walked out of the room, went
down the street to the Windsor Hotel in Montreal,
and created the NHL. It's incredible. It wasn't
born from a grand visionary business plan. It
was a temporary frantic band -aid to dodge Eddie
Livingstone and a military lawsuit. And my absolute
favorite consequence of this frantic scramble
is what happened to Toronto. Because the new
NHL still desperately wanted a team in Toronto.
They had to. They had to balance out their schedule
and maintain that crucial market. Right. So they
created a temporary makeshift franchise operated
by the Arena Gardens. They essentially commandeered
Livingstone's players, arguing those players
belonged to the league as a whole. Not him personally.
A very convenient argument. Super convenient.
But because this entire operation was born out
of pure spite and meant to be a temporary fix,
this new Toronto team played the entire first
NHL season without an official nickname. They
were Toronto, just the city name. What's fascinating
here is that this duct taped makeshift solution,
this administrative shell game played purely
out of petty business rivalry. It became the
permanent bedrock for one of the most successful
sporting empires in human history. It really
is. They built a multi -billion dollar institution
by accident while trying to run away from a co
-worker. It's unbelievable. But zooming out from
the boardroom drama, we also have to consider
what was happening in the rest of the world at
this exact moment in late 1917. You have to remember
the broader global reality. World War I was raging
in Europe. Right. The conflict was taking a devastating
toll on every aspect of Canadian society. And
professional hockey was certainly not immune.
The manpower drain was severe. Because everyone
was enlisting. Exactly. One of the original teams
slated to join this new NHL was the Quebec Bulldogs.
But as the season approached, they found themselves
in an impossible position. So many of their players
had enlisted or been drafted into the armed forces
that they simply couldn't ice a competitive roster.
They tried to find a workaround, didn't they?
Some sort of merger. They attempted to merge
with a prominent local amateur team called the
Sons of Ireland. The hope was to pull those players
up to the professional ranks to fill the gaps.
Did it work? No. The amateur players outright
refused to turn pro. Without those reinforcements,
the Bulldogs had no choice but to completely
suspend operations before the season even started.
Which meant the brand new NHL was suddenly down
to just three active teams. You had Montreal
Canadiens, the Montreal Wanderers, and the Ottawa
Senators. Oh, and our nameless Toronto squad.
So four. Sorry. A crew of teams, yes. And it
meant there was a pool of stranded Quebec players
who needed to be dispersed among those remaining
teams. Which triggered a dispersal draft. And
that quickly devolved into its own brand of front
office chaos. Naturally. The Montreal Wanderers
were up to pick. Now, available in this draft
poll was Joe Malone. And obviously anyone looking
at early hockey records knows Joe Malone was
an absolute scoring machine, which makes the
Wanderers' decision to pass on him even more
baffling. What on earth were they thinking? It
remains one of the great historical blunders
of the era. The Wanderers decided to gamble.
Instead of taking a proven superstar in Malone,
they drafted the Clayhorn Brothers. Odie. and
Sprague. Two to one. Right. On paper, securing
two high -level players with one pick might have
seemed like a clever strategic maneuver. In reality,
it was a catastrophe. How quickly did that strategy
fall apart? Almost immediately. Sprague Clayhorn
broke his leg before he could make an impact,
completely sidelining him. Ouch. And his brother,
Odie. He actually managed to secure an exemption
from the military draft. But the strict legal
condition of that military exemption was that
he was forbidden from playing professional hockey.
You cannot make this up. So the Wanderers essentially
burned their draft pick and got absolutely nothing
in return. Meanwhile, the Montreal Canadiens
gladly scooped up Joe Malone. I'm guessing the
Wanderers owner didn't take that gracefully.
Oh, Sam Lichtenheim, the owner of the Wanderers,
he threw an apocalyptic tantrum. He threatened
to completely fold his franchise on the spot
unless the rest of the league compensated him
by handing over all the remaining Quebec players.
And let me guess, the other owners said no. They
were entirely unsympathetic. George Kennedy,
the owner of the Canadiens, pointedly reminded
Lichtenhein that he had the opportunity to draft
Joe Malone and chose not to. Fair point. So with
rosters cobbled together through sheer luck and
spite, I have to imagine the actual product on
the ice was unpredictable. Let's talk about opening
night. December 19, 1917. The very first games
in NHL history featured two matchups. The Montreal
Canadiens traveled to play the Ottawa Senators,
securing a 7 -4 victory. And Joe Malone, the
player the Wanderers explicitly passed on, scored
five of Montreal's seven goals that night. A
tough pill for Sam Lichtenhein to swallow. Five
goals. Meanwhile, back in Montreal, the Wanderers
were hosting the nameless Toronto team. And the
Wanderers managed to squeak out a win, but the
final score was 10 -9. 10 -9. A 10 -9 final score
implies defense was essentially optional that
night. But beyond the wild scores, there's a
massive historical blind spot regarding that
first night, isn't there? There is, and it raises
an important question about how history is recorded,
especially in an era without instantaneous digital
tracking. To this day, we actually do not know
who scored the very first goal in NHL history.
Which is crazy to think about. We know that Dave
Ritchie of the Wanderers scored at the one -minute
mark of his game in Montreal. We know Joe Malone
scored at the six -minute mark of his game in
Ottawa. So on paper, Ritchie's goal at the one
-minute mark sounds like the obvious winner.
What's the complication? The complication is
the real -world start times. The game in Montreal
was scheduled for 8 .15 p .m. and historical
reports suggest it started relatively on time.
But the game in Ottawa was scheduled for 8 .30pm.
Ah, I see. Furthermore, accounts from the arena
indicate the Ottawa game was delayed just before
the puck dropped because of a sudden contract
dispute. Wait, a contract dispute right as they're
about to play? Right at puck drop. Because historians
only have the game clock times one minute versus
six minutes and not the exact real world time
the puck entered the net, it's entirely possible
the Montreal game progressed fast enough that
Richie scored first or the delay in Ottawa pushed
Malone's goal later into the evening. A contract
dispute literally erasing the answer to a trivia
question a century later. You have to love the
chaos. It's perfect. But despite winning that
opening game 10 to 9. things were looking incredibly
bleak for the Wanderers. Very bleak. They drew
a meager crowd of only 700 fans for that inaugural
game. And after that high -scoring victory, they
proceeded to lose their next three games in a
row. Not a great start. Lichtenhein was once
again threatening to withdraw from the league,
desperately trying to orchestrate trades with
the rival Pacific Coast Hockey Association, or
PCHA, just to keep his team relevant. And then
the Univol stepped in and made the decision for
him. On January 2nd, 1918, the Westmount Arena
in Montreal, which served as the home rink for
both the Wanderers and the Canadians, caught
fire and burned entirely to the ground. A literal
fire, forcing the league into its next existential
crisis. The Canadians, having slightly deeper
pockets and better management, were able to scramble
and secure a lease at the smaller Jubilee rink.
That held about 3 ,250 spectators. The Wanderers,
however, were left completely homeless. They
pleaded with the other owners for help, right?
Hamilton actually offered them an arena to play
in, but Lichtenheim demanded that the other teams
donate players to him to make the relocation
viable. And the other owners flatly refused.
So on January 4, just a few weeks into the very
first NHL season, the Montreal Wanderers simply
folded. They threw in the towel. Here's where
it gets really interesting. What did the league
do about the rest of the Wanderers' schedule?
The NHL administrators decided that the easiest
solution was to simply count all of the Wanderers'
scheduled future games as automatic wins for
their opponents. Can you imagine the outrage
if that happened today? You wake up, you check
the standings, and your team has jumped into
first place simply because the team they were
supposed to play last night had their arena burned
down, so you just get the points automatically.
If we look at this analytically... It perfectly
highlights the sheer fragility of early professional
sports. Today, leagues have ironclad, billion
-dollar broadcast schedules, contingency plans,
competitive equity committees. In 1918, if a
building burned down, a founding franchise just
ceased to exist, and they handed out free points
to keep the math simple. So the league is down
to three teams. You've got the Canadians, Ottawa,
and Toronto. How did the actual gameplay hold
up under all this administrative chaos? Well,
the game itself was evolving rapidly, often forcing
the rulebook to play catch up. This brings us
to January 9, 1918, and the very first major
rule change in NHL history. Under the old NHA
rules, which the NHL had wholesale adopted, goaltenders
were strictly required to remain standing at
all times. They could not drop to the ice to
smother a puck or make a save. But Ottawa's goalie
Clint Benedict found a highly suspicious workaround.
He would just so happen to lose his balance and
accidentally fall to his knees right as a slap
shot was coming toward him, using his body to
block the net. Just a coincidence, I'm sure.
Oh, I'm sure it was very clumsy of him. It was
a brilliant, if flagrant, exploitation of the
rule. He did it so frequently and so obviously
that the league brass finally had to intervene.
They couldn't ignore it anymore. Exactly. But
rather than instituting harsher penalties for
his clumsiness, lead president Frank Calder realized
Benedict's method was actually the natural evolution
of the position. The league officially changed
the rule to allow goalies to drop to the ice.
Calder famously declared, as far as I'm concerned,
they can stand on their heads. And just like
that, the foundational concept of the butterfly
style of goaltending is born. But while the goalies
were innovating, the skaters were taking out
their frustrations on each other. Tell me about
January 28. Was the league actually able to enforce
any discipline with the players? Discipline was
a highly localized, sometimes chaotic affair.
On January 28, the Montreal Canadiens were visiting
Toronto. During the course of the game, Toronto's
Alf Skinner and Montreal's Joe Hall got into
a violently aggressive altercation. It was a
full -blown stick -swinging duel. They were wielding
their hockey sticks like broadswords. Now, in
the modern era, that gets you a major penalty,
an immediate ejection, and a lengthy suspension
from the Department of Player Safety. In 1918,
the local Toronto police walked right out onto
the ice and arrested both players for disorderly
conduct in front of the crowd. It's a stark reminder
of how raw the sport was. They were hauled off
mid -game. The league issued them both match
penalties and a $15 fine. But the legal system
took over from there. They actually received
suspended sentences from the local courts for
their actions on the ice. But it wasn't just
physical violence that challenged the league's
authority. It was also the players' sheer insolence.
We have to talk about Ken Randall and his pennies.
Oh, yes. Randall played for Toronto and had been
suspended by the league, pending the payment
of $35 in accumulated fines. And $35 was a considerable
sum of money for a player at that time. Randall
clearly felt the fine was unjust and decided
to make his displeasure known. He shows up to
the arena to pay his fine just before a game
against Ottawa. He hands over $32 in paper bills
and then slaps down a bag containing exactly
300 pennies. The league officials, understandably,
refused to accept a bag of loose copper as official
payment. So Randall, completely furious, takes
the bag and violently dumps all 300 pennies right
onto the ice surface just before puck drop. An
Ottawa player skating by sees the pile, takes
his stick, and just sweeps the pennies, scattering
them all across the rink. Thus causing a massive,
agonizing delay of game. The officials and the
players had to skate around the ice surface,
meticulously picking up spare change so that
no one would catch an edge on a penny and break
an ankle. It is a level of petty defiance that
is truly remarkable. It's incredible. So through
all this, teams folding, arenas burning to the
ground, goalies inventing new styles by falling
over, and players getting arrested or scattering
change, they actually managed to finish the regular
season. They did. And because they had carried
over the NHA's structural rules, the season was
played in two distinct halves. Montreal won the
first half of the schedule and Toronto rallied
to win the second half. OK. This meant the two
franchises had to face off in a two game total
goal series to determine the ultimate NHL champion.
The sources note it was an incredibly brutal
series featuring massive brawls, specifically
involving Montreal's New Zealand and Toronto's
Burt Corbio. But Toronto manages to survive,
winning the series with an aggregate score of
10 -7 over the two games. However, winning the
NHL championship was only the first step. To
claim the ultimate prize, the Stanley Cup, Toronto
now had to face the champions of the rival league
out west of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association,
or PCHA. It's essentially the World Series of
early hockey. The NHL champion against the PCHA
champion. The Vancouver Millionaires made the
grueling train journey east to play Toronto at
the Arena Gardens. But here is the massive catch
these two professional leagues played by entirely
different sets of rules. This is a concept that
is truly bizarre by today's sporting standards.
The NHL played with six men on the ice per team,
which is the standard we know today. But the
PCHA still played the older style of hockey,
which featured seven men on the ice. They utilized
an extra position known as a rover. How does
one extra player change the game that much? The
rover didn't have a fixed defensive or offensive
zone. They freely roamed the ice. Having a seventh
man entirely changes the geometry of the rink.
Suddenly, the neutral zone is heavily clogged.
Passing lanes that exist in a six -man game completely
disappear in a seven -man game. The physical
toll and the required strategy are entirely different.
So how do you play a definitive championship
series between two leagues with fundamentally
different rules? You alternate. The game simply
alternated between the PCHA's seven -man rules
and the NHL's six -man rules. I cannot imagine
the physiological and mental toll that took on
the players having to entirely switch their tactical
mindset every other night. It heavily favored
the home league's adaptations. Toronto won all
three games played under their familiar NHL six
-man rules. Vancouver won both games played under
the PCHA's seven -man rules. But because it was
a best -of -five series, the math favored Toronto.
They clinched the series 3 -2, with Corbett Dennedy
scoring the decisive goal. Earning the nameless
Toronto franchise the team built out of spare
parts to spite Eddie Livingstone, the very first
Stanley Cup awarded to an NHL team. And we can't
close out the books on the season without mentioning
Joe Malone's final statistics. Remember, he's
the superstar the Wanderers inexplicably passed
on in the dispersal draft. Right. He finished
that 20 game season with 44 goals, 44 goals in
20 games. It's an absolutely untouchable scoring
pace that perfectly encapsulates the wild defense
optional nature of that first year. If we connect
this to the bigger picture. The story of the
1917 -18 NHL season is a vital reminder that
the sleek, highly professional, perfectly branded
institutions we interact with today almost never
started out that way. They usually have chaotic,
makeshift, deeply flawed origins. Institutional
success is very often just about surviving the
early fires, literally, in the case of the Westmount
Arena, and metaphorically. This nascent league
survived a massive global war, a suspended constitution,
and owners who were constantly at each other's
throats. simply because they refused to quit.
So what does this all mean? It means the NHL,
as we know it, survived out of sheer, unadulterated
stubbornness. It survived petty spite, literal
infernos, the manpower drain of global conflict,
mid -game police interventions, and bizarre alternating
rule books to finally crown its first champion.
It's quite a legacy. It really is. And I want
to leave you with a final thought to ponder as
we wrap up this deep dive. If Eddie Livingstone
hadn't been so intensely universally disliked
by his peers, the NHL might never have been created
as a legal loophole to bypass him. That specific
flavor of interpersonal annoyance birthed the
cultural and economic juggernaut. It really begs
the question, what other massive multi -billion
dollar institutions in our modern world only
exist today because of petty office politics?
about that the next time you're stuck in a meeting
with a co -worker you can't stand. You never
know what kind of empire you might accidentally
build just trying to get away from them.