Hockey is a popular and beloved by many team winter sport.

The aim of the game is to throw with the stick, as many pucks as possible in the opponent’s goal and not miss in their own. Many hockey players have turned into world stars. So what is the reason for the popularity of hockey? When and where was the birth and formation of this wonderful game?

Many people mistakenly think that Canada is the country where ice hockey was born. This fact is only partially true. Canada is a birthplace of modern hockey, but the ancestor of hockey was, common among the Dutch in the 16th century, the game on the ice with a semblance of a puck and a ball. Later the game was carried on in Foggy Albion and Scandinavia, where it was transformed into ball hockey, which became known as “bendy”.

Since the 70s of the 19th century, hockey matches in Canada became an integral part of various holidays and events. It was here that hockey began to develop most rapidly, because Canada had excellent conditions for such matches: numerous lakes, snowy winters. At one time they are very contributed to the spread and popularization of the sport.

The first rules of the game were invented by students from the Canadian city of Montreal. Goal served as a pair of ordinary stones, which have acted as bars, the puck – a disc of wood or a heavy ball. Nine athletes from each team participated in the meeting.

The first hockey game was held in the spring of 1875 in Montreal. Eleven years later, in 1886, the official rules appeared. That is when the historic international meeting was held. Hockey teams from England and Canada met, with the Canadians having the upper hand.
A year before the 20th century in 1899 Montreal was built and inaugurated the world’s first indoor hockey stadium. Sports fields with artificial ice began to be built. Thanks to the ingenuity and efforts of ice hockey fan and fisherman Francis Non, at the turn of the 20th century, a net was hung on the ice hockey goal. Later, the parameters of hockey sites and the duration of one meeting (three twenty-minute playing segments) were defined, the number of players in teams was reduced to 6 people, substitutions were introduced, in case of injury of a player of one of the teams.

The appearance of professional ice hockey teams dates back to 1904. It is not difficult to guess that this event took place in Canada.

Since 1928, field players began to use protective helmets, and since 1929 masks for goalkeepers were introduced. In 1945, colored lights began to be installed behind the hockey goalposts. Green meant no goal and red signaled that the puck had crossed the goal line. It is an interesting fact that today hockey is the only sporting game where the rules allow power plays. They only add to the entertainment of this already exciting game.

In the 20th century hockey settled on the European continent and began to gain popularity. In 1910 the first European Championship was held between national teams. Ten years later, in 1920, the first World Championship was held.

Originally, hockey world championships were held like the Olympics once every four years. After a decade, the championships began to be held annually.

Hockey was included in the program of the first Winter Olympics in 1924. The first game of the Olympic hockey tournament was played between the teams of Europe and Canada. The athletes from Canada won. Until 1936, all hockey tournaments were won by the Canadians. There was very little time left before Canada’s eternal rivals, the Soviet hockey players, were to reach the international level.

Hockey was one of the youngest sports games in our country. Attempts to develop it were made in the Soviet Union back in the 30s of the 20th century. True, the new game gained popularity not so fast. In the USSR, hockey began to develop only a year after the victory over Hitler’s Germany.

The first USSR ice hockey championship was held in December 1946. The rapid development was facilitated by the 1948 decree of the Communist Party of the USSR on physical education. Within 6 years, the “Soviet country” had its own school of hockey. Eight years later, in 1954, the USSR ice hockey team took part in an international tournament for the first time. In the final match our team beat the Canadians 7-2. The next year, the Canadians took revenge. That was when an uncompromising struggle between two teams, schools, ideologies – Soviet and Canadian – began. Matches of the Super Series in 1972 are the clearest proof of this. At that time 4 hockey matches were held in Canada and the same number in Moscow. The Canadians considered our hockey players amateurs and their team professionals. But already the first game proved the opposite. Our team won with a score of 7:3. And even though at the end of all eight games the USSR national team lost to Canada, the ability of the Soviet athletes to play hockey was confirmed at the highest level by the founders of the sport.

The USSR has long since ceased to exist, but the confrontation between Russia and Canada has not lost its relevance to the present day. Both teams are trendsetters of hockey fashion and suppliers of the best representatives of the sport to the NHL and KHL clubs, as well as national teams.

The hockey team of the USSR, and later Russia, during their participation in international tournaments, became multiple winners of world and European championships and winners of Olympic gold medals. The tradition of Soviet ice hockey is very strong in the coaching school and the process of training and educating young athletes. It is not without reason that the victories of Russian hockey are known all over the world.