The first organized indoor hockey game was played in Montreal
On this day · 3 March 1875
Montreal students swapped a bouncing ball for a flat wooden disk, and modern ice hockey was born indoors.
On March 3, 1875, at the Victoria Skating Rink in Montreal, two teams took the ice for what is recognized as the first organized indoor game of ice hockey. The match followed a written set of rules drawn up by a group of McGill University students.
The organizer, law student James Creighton, captained one side and helped formalize the rules. His teams played nine men per side, and one crucial innovation set the contest apart from earlier ice games.
They substituted a flat, wooden disk, which gave players far more control than a lacrosse ball.
That puck, kept low to spare spectators and the rink’s tall glass windows, is the direct ancestor of the modern one. Creighton’s team won, two games to one.
Fittingly for the sport’s future, the evening ended in a scuffle, though not among the players. The fight broke out between the hockey men and members of the skating club whose ice they had borrowed.
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