The NHL began with four Canadian teams in 1917
The National Hockey League was founded at Montreal's Windsor Hotel on 26 November 1917. All four original clubs were Canadian, which explains the word National, and the league stayed that way until the Boston Bruins arrived in 1924. It now has 32 teams, 25 in the United States and seven in Canada.
Its predecessor, the National Hockey Association, had formed at Renfrew, Ontario, in 1909. By its eighth season the owners of the Canadiens, Wanderers, Senators and Bulldogs were fed up with Toronto Blueshirts owner Eddie Livingstone, and because the NHA constitution gave them no way to expel him, they suspended that league and started a new one. Frank Calder served as the first president until he died in 1943. Quebec could not take part, so a new Toronto Arenas club filled in, and the first games were played on 19 December 1917. When the Montreal Arena burned in January 1918 the Wanderers folded, leaving just three teams.
The Stanley Cup, North America's oldest professional sports trophy, was then an interleague prize. Toronto beat the Vancouver Millionaires for it in 1918, and the 1919 final against Seattle was abandoned because of the Spanish flu. In 1925 the Hamilton Tigers refused to play for the title without a C$200 bonus, and later that spring Victoria's Cougars became the last non-NHL team to win the Cup, which became the league's own championship from 1926.
Rapid 1920s growth added the Montreal Maroons, New York Americans and Rangers, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Detroit, and Taffy Abel, a Native American Ranger, broke the colour barrier in 1926. From 1942 to 1967 only six teams remained, the Original Six; expansion then doubled the league, reaching 30 clubs by 2000 and 32 by 2021. In 2024 Salt Lake City took over the Arizona Coyotes' hockey assets as what is now the Utah Mammoth.
Clubs play 82 games from October to April, and 16 enter a four-round Cup playoff into June. Montreal leads with 25 titles, and Carolina beat Vegas in the 2026 final. Headquarters moved from Montreal to New York in 1989.
Source: National Hockey League
