hockey
The earliest North American games were played in Canada. British soldiers stationed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, organized contests on frozen ponds in and around that city in the 1870s, and about that same time in Montreal students began facing off against each other in a downtown ice rink. The continent's first hockey league was said to have been launched in Kingston, Ontario, in 1885, and it included four teams.
The English Governor General of Canada, Lord Stanley of Preston, 1892 bought a silver bowl with an interior gold finish and decreed that it be given each year to the best amateur team in Canada. That trophy has come to be known as the Stanley Cup and is awarded today to the franchise that wins the National Hockey League playoffs. Back when hockey was first played in Canada, the teams had nine men per side. But by the time the Stanley Cup was introduced, it was a seven-man game. The change came about accidentally in the late 1880s after a club playing in the Montreal Winter Carnival showed up two men short, and its opponent agreed to drop the same number of players on its team to even the match. Players began to prefer the smaller squad, and it wasn't long before that number became the standard for the sport. Each team featured one goaltender, three forwards, two defensemen, and a rover, who had the option of moving up ice on the attack or falling back to defend his goal.
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