Ice Hockey Equipment Has Come a Long Way, Like Hockey Itself!

If you feel that all the ice hockey equipment modern players wear is a bit much, look at the early history of the sport and you might wonder how anyone survived!

Read our brief history of ice hockey for the background to this great game…

Hockey began from simple ball and stick games played throughout England in the sixteen and seventeen hundreds. These were treacherous games that often combined the entire village versus another village and teams could often have up to a hundred players and the players often played through major injuries and endured several days of these games.

Of course this was not ice hockey, with players clad in the latest ice hockey equipment and facing off during a fast paced high speed game!

It would be the 19th century until the coveted Stanley cup came into being when the governor general of Canada, Lord Stanley of Preston attended the Montreal Winter Carnival in 1888, where the game was showcased. He was so impressed with this new winter game, played with little or no specialist ice hockey equipment that he helped create the championship and a trophy for the best team in the country, and that trophy was the Stanley Cup.

Since then, the game has just grown in popularity and has spread around the world. The game of hockey is so popular because it's competitive, fast-paced, and can be violent at times, but most of all, it takes immense skill to be able play. It takes a good understanding of the game to grasp the ins and outs of specialist ice hockey equipment – it’s not easy on the thin blades of ice skates while manoeuvring that tiny puck around the rink. But that’s the beauty of the game.

The National Hockey League in the US was formed in 1917 and consists of 30 teams 24 of which are from America and the remainder in Canada. The bulk of the players come from Canada, Europe and America. There is also an International Association called the International Hockey Federation which was formed in 1908, and continues today by hosting some of the largest international ice hockey tournaments and defining the levels of ice hockey equipment to be worn and other rules.

These two organizations have helped to form and govern hockey as we know it today. The sport has grown a lot from sticks and balls to the players today with their expensive ice hockey equipment.

The Hockey Den – For all Your Ice Hockey Equipment

Whatever your ice hockey equipment needs visit The Hockey den for everything you need to take part, visit them at https://thehockeyden.co.uk or call 01623 554415.