Lords of the Rinks: The Emergence of the National Hockey League, 1875-1936

by John Chi-Kit Wong

No sport is as important to Canadians as hockey. Though there may be a great many things that divide the country, the love of hockey is perhaps its single greatest unifier. Before the latest labour unrest in the National Hockey League (NHL), however, it was easy to forget that hockey is also a multi-million dollar business run, not by the athletes or coaches, but by corporate boards and businessmen. The Lords of the Rinks documents the early years of hockey's professionalization and commercialization and the emergence of a fledgling NHL, from 1875 to 1936.

As the popularity of hockey grew in Canada in the late nineteenth century, so too did its commercial aspects, and players, club directors, rink owners, fans, and media had developed deep emotional, economic, and ideological interests in the sport. Disagreement came in the ways and means of how organized hockey, especially at the elite level, should be managed. Hence, some coordination, by way of governing bodies, was required to maintain a semblance of order. These early administrative bodies tried to maintain a structure that would help to coordinate the various interests, set up standards of behaviour, and impose mechanisms to detect and punish violators of governance. In 1917, the NHL held its first games and by 1936 had become the dominant governing body in professional hockey.

Having performed extensive research in the NHL archives—including league meeting minutes, letters, memos, telegrams, as well as gate receipt reports—John Chi-Kit Wong traces the commercial roots of hockey and argues that, in its organized form, the sport was rarely if ever without some commercial aspects despite labels such as amateur and professional. The Lords of the Rinks is the only truly comprehensive and scholarly history of the league and the business of hockey.

Genres: Hockey, History, Sports

330 pages, Paperback

First published September 24, 2005

Reviews

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wong, after getting a rare examination of the NHL Archives, explores the early history of hockey as a commercial enterprise, with a focus on the history of the representative top levels and how they developed from elite amateur to professional to the National Hockey League’s status as a sports cartel over pro hockey in North America. It explores the relationship of the stakeholders of elite hockey that shaped the sport, from club directors, promotoers, arena owners, players, fans, media, 3 levels of government, and rival leagues. Though hockey early on followed the “British model” of strict upper class amateurism, by 1894, with the first Stanley Cup tournament, it was clearly a commercial venture. Wong argued that the push to win and achieve greater profit margins lead to secret and not so secret professionalism in the 1890s-1900s, coupled with rapid growth of Canadian cities after most of the 19th century the country was sparsely populated. In the “Athletic Wars”, the argument over amateurism and the US model of professionalism lead to a split in the sport into the National Hockey Association (NHA) and rival leagues, and the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association. From here, the NHA battled it out over the course of the 1910s-20s for supremacy, beginning to play games versus the Pacific Canadian Hockey Association for the Stanly Cup. After expanding and moving teams into Northeastern United States and Great Lakes region in the 1920s, the rebranded NHL had become the dominant hockey organization, rivaled only by the amateur CAHA, which collapsed into subsidiary status by the Great Depression. Indeed, the Great Depression challenged the NHL to share its profits more evenly as a few of its teams slide into bankruptcy.

Key Themes and Concepts
-Wong explicetely looks at the top levels since it represents hockey in the popular consciousness, which he acknowledges largely excludes people of color and women who played the sport, as well as spontaneous grassroots level hockey to focus on urban centers.

-Athletic war split hockey into strictly amateur and strictly professional realms.

-Stanley Cup mythologizes itself as a long standing and oldest professional sports championship.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A heavily academic work that was originally a PhD thesis, Wong utilised the NHL archives and traced the emergence of professional hockey from its amateur roots, and then how the NHL grew out of that to become the dominant league, including how it took control of the minor American Hockey League. Though a tough read for those not used to academic works, it gives one of the most comprehensive accounts of the development of professional hockey in Canada and the United States.

[AskHistorians]

John Chi-Kit Wong. A heavily academic work that was originally a PhD thesis, Wong utilised the NHL archives and traced the emergence of professional hockey from its amateur roots, and then how the NHL grew out of that to become the dominant league, including how it took control of the minor American Hockey League. Though a tough read for those not used to academic works, it gives one of the most comprehensive accounts of the development of professional hockey in Canada and the United States.

[Missy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a bit dry, but covers the inception of the NHL along with minor hockey leagues that have come and gone due to business dealings, economic hardships, territorial pissings (for lack of a better description), etc. There are interesting bits of information here and there but in terms of interest, it's a put-down, pick-up-later book that I read over the course of about four months.