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History

NHL · FOUNDED 1917

The NHL was born in a Montreal hotel in 1917, spent a quarter of a century shaking itself down to six clubs, and then grew into a thirty-two-team league that still hands out the hardest trophy to win in team sport — a Cup that takes sixteen playoff wins in two months of hockey.

The moments

  1. 1917

    Four clubs in a Montreal hotel

    The National Hockey League was founded at the Windsor Hotel in Montreal, mid-war, by clubs walking out of a league they could no longer stand. Toronto won the first title. Only two of the founding franchises — the Canadiens and the Maple Leafs, under an older name — are still playing.

  2. 1942

    The Original Six

    The Brooklyn Americans folded and left six clubs — Montreal, Toronto, Boston, Detroit, Chicago and the New York Rangers. For twenty-five years the whole league was those six, seventy games a season against the same five opponents, and the rivalries it baked in have never cooled.

  3. 1959

    The goalie puts on a mask

    Jacques Plante took a shot to the face, went to the dressing room, and came back wearing the mask his coach had forbidden. Montreal won 18 straight with it on; within a decade a bare-faced goaltender was unthinkable.

  4. 1960

    Five in a row

    Montreal completed a fifth consecutive Stanley Cup, a run no club has matched since. The Canadiens would finish the century with twenty-four Cups, the most of any franchise in North American sport.

  5. 1967

    The league doubles overnight

    Six new clubs joined in a single summer — the biggest one-day expansion any major league has attempted — and hockey stretched from two countries' border towns to California.

  6. 1980

    Four straight for the Islanders

    The New York Islanders, a 1972 expansion club, opened a run of four consecutive Cups and nineteen straight playoff series wins — a record streak of series that still stands.

  7. 1984

    The Oilers arrive

    Edmonton took the Cup from the Islanders and won five of the next seven with the highest-scoring team ever assembled. The 1983/84 Oilers scored 446 goals in eighty games, a figure no club has approached since.

  8. 1988

    The Trade

    Wayne Gretzky — four Cups, eight straight MVPs, every scoring record — was traded from Edmonton to Los Angeles. A member of parliament demanded the government block it. It made hockey matter in the American sun belt, and the league has planted franchises there ever since.

  9. 1994

    Fifty-four years

    The New York Rangers won the Cup for the first time since 1940, Mark Messier having guaranteed a win in game six of the semifinal and scored a hat-trick to keep his word.

  10. 2005

    The season that never happened

    The 2004/05 season was cancelled entirely over a salary-cap fight — the only time a major North American league has lost a full season to a labour dispute. Hockey came back with the shootout, the cap, and rules that reopened the ice for skill.

  11. 2025

    Eight hundred and ninety-five

    Alex Ovechkin scored his 895th goal in April 2025 and passed Wayne Gretzky's career record — the one number hockey had agreed was unreachable, chased down across twenty seasons in Washington.

Records that stand

2,857career pointsWayne Gretzky, 1979–1999
92goals in one seasonWayne Gretzky, 1981/82
215points in one seasonWayne Gretzky, 1985/86
11Stanley Cups won by one playerHenri Richard, Montreal
446goals by one team in a seasonEdmonton Oilers, 1983/84

Roll of honour

24Montreal CanadiensStanley Cups
13Toronto Maple LeafsStanley Cups
11Detroit Red WingsStanley Cups
6Boston Bruins and Chicago Blackhawkssix each
5Edmonton Oilers and Pittsburgh Penguinsfive each

Cup counts are through the 2024/25 season. Montreal's twenty-four include 1916, won before the NHL existed, in the league the Canadiens left to found it — Canadiens fans count it, and nobody argues with Canadiens fans.