Hockey

“ Hockey is usually played on the ice by players on skates, although, like the old game of shinney, it may be played on any level piece of ground. The hockey stick is a curved piece of Canadian rock elm with a flat blade. Instead of a ball the modern game of ice hockey is played with a rubber disk called a “puck.” In hockey, as in many other games, the whole object is to drive the puck into your opponents’ goal and to prevent them from driving it into yours. Almost any number of boys can play hockey, but a modern team consists of five players. ”

“ The prettiest spectacle afforded by a good hockey match, is the rush down the ice, four abreast, of the forwards. This play to a man of sporting instincts, verges on the beautiful.
When four men in a line, racing at lightning speed, approach the defence of their opponents, it is then that the goal-keeper of the attacked party sees danger signals floating in the air, because the assistance he will receive from his defence men, is, on these occasions, problematical. ”

“ The year 1899 saw hockey the most universally popular game in Canada. With the erection in Montreal, of the Arena rink, of whose interior an excellent picture is given on the opposite page, new blood was infused into the old clubs, and young ones sprang into life like rabbits in California. ”

“ Marjorie's hot spirits chafed against her punishment. It was terribly hard to be kept from hockey practice. She missed the physical exercise as well as the excitement of the game. On three golden afternoons she had watched the others run across the shrubbery towards the playing-fields, and, taking her dejected way to her classroom, had spent the time writing at her desk. The fourth hockey afternoon was one of those lovely spring days when nature seems to beckon one out of doors into the sunshine. ”

“ As first played in Canada, hockey went by various names, some of which were apparently merely local—hurley, shinny, rickets, and so forth, It was played only upon the ice in winter-time, and there was not much pretence to rules, each player taking part as best he knew how. No effort toward systematizing the game appears to have been made until the year 1875, when the members of the Montreal Football Club, in search of some lively athletic amusement for the long winter months, recognized in hockey the very thing they wanted. ”

“ Only those who are in good condition and at home on their skates should undertake to play hockey. It is a violent game, and tests both wind and muscle to the utmost. The player must make up his mind to many falls, and no lack of hard knocks on shins and knuckles; for such things will happen, however faithfully the contestants try to keep to the rules. At the same time, these very characteristics make hockey one of the manliest of sports. Strength, speed, endurance, self-control, shrewdness, are the necessary qualities of one who would excel in it. ”

“ A hockey player must necessarily be strong physically and constitutionally. If his muscles be well developed, well trained, and his constitution weak, so violent a game as this will do him an irreparable injury. Hockey is so fast, so trying on a forward player, who is rushing continually, from the opening to the closing of a match, that, in order to play without out hurting himself, he must be in perfect condition. ”

“ That a book on our national winter sport has not yet appeared in Canada is a marvel. If hockey were a novelty to us, then we might not reproach ourselves for our tardiness in this respect, but it is our most popular winter game, long established, thoroughly appreciated, and it certainly deserves a place with the other athletic pastimes that boast of a hand-book. ”

“ Mentioning to some friends that hockey was the winter game par excellence in Montreal, he was induced to write for a puck and some sticks, and teach them the sport. This was in 1887, and in a few years the game that electrified the people of the east, was destined to secure a fast hold upon the sporting instincts of those in the west. From Toronto to Winnipeg, Hockey was received with great éclat. Clubs were formed in every city that boasted of the name, and unions and associations sprang up to regulate the games and to draw up schedules. ”

“ Of all the games that developed from the old Roman sport the British hockey alone shaped the destiny of ours. There can be but little doubt, but that "shinny," the forerunner of our scientific hockey, is the Canadian interpretation of the game played across the water, adapted in its application to the climate of the country. Hockey in England is played in the winter on the frozen ground. It consists in driving a ball from one point to another by means of a hooked stick. ”

“ With the facilities afforded hockey players and beginners in every city in the Dominion, the game will boom. Every athletic club will have its teams, and universities, colleges and schools will buzz on the ice at their favorite sport, while hundreds and thousands, eager to enjoy the sight, will flock to the rinks and cheer their sides to victory. ”

“ Not that hockey is native to the soil in the same sense as lacrosse. In a simpler form, and under different names, it has long existed in England; but the difference between the game as played there on the green and played in Canada on the ice, is as great as that between an old-fashioned game of rounders and a professional game of base-ball. ”

“ Almost at once after the unsuccessful try the puck was at the Beavers’ goal, threatening it—occasion for more shouting. What a fast game hockey is! How exhilarating to watch! How I envied those boys. What excitement, what exhilaration it must be for them! Here was fame spontaneous, overwhelming, real. This was their world, much what the social world would be to me,—I hoped.
Time was called and the cheering fell to a subdued murmur. The players left the ice for their dressing-rooms. ”

“ The proof that in a game of hockey every muscle receives its due exercise, is this, that after the first few practices, before he is "in condition," a player feels sore and stiff in every muscle of his body.
Being practically an out-door sport it is exhilarating and healthy, and productive of an absorbing appetite, which latter is borne out by the statement of an hotel keeper who once said that "a hockey team can eat more in a limited time than a team of footballers, or a lacrosse twelve with all their spares and coaches." ”

“ A very important feature of hockey is that it may be played at night. Since the introduction of the electric light our rinks are made as bright as day, and then the many hard-working young men who are too busy all day to take part in any sport have the opportunity of an hour's splendid exercise after their work is over. ”

“ Take it all in all, there is perhaps no winter sport exclusively for men that is destined to become more popular, or have more enduring favour. In Canada new associations are rapidly springing up, and local leagues that arrange a schedule of matches for the season. The boys are taking hold of the game with great zest, closely imitating the tricks and artifices of their big brothers, and it is safe to say that hockey has definitely taken its place among the national sports of Canada. ”

“ Add to this the pleasure, the excitement afforded by a good, clean game of hockey, and we have an ideal sport.
2.—The men who play are, as a general rule, those who excel in other lines of athletic sport. If it is an easy matter to point out a foot-baller, or a lacrosse player, who is ignorant of other games, it is difficult to mention a hockey player who does not shine as an athlete in other branches. It seems that a hockey player, in playing the game, makes use of all the science he acquires in practising other sports, without the roughness. ”

“ Ice Hockey in its simplest form of driving a ball across a given limit with a stick or club has been played for centuries in northern Europe, attaining its greatest popularity in the Low Countries, and there are many 16th- and 17th-century paintings extant which represent games of Bandy, the players using an implement formed much like a golf club. ”

“ The hockey games were like those played by men and boys in civilised lands, only here everybody who wished to play was paired with somebody else, so as to keep the sides even. Everybody not otherwise engaged enthusiastically took a hand in it, and the fun was very great. Mr Hurlburt, Mr Ross, Hudson Bay officers, as well as all down to the smallest Indian lad who could handle a crooked stick, had a share in this game. The day was so cold, and the smooth ice expanse so great, that the vigorous exercise did everybody good. ”

“ It is surprising how many ladies' teams exist in Canada, and although we do not read of fast, exciting games between these graceful votaries of the sport, it is a slow, small town that can glory in not one such. Thus, hockey players may flatter themselves that their game is honored in a way that no other of the kind may claim. ”

“ The boys were getting so much sport out of 129 ice hockey that—as the league approved of that form of exercise—the physical instructor introduced it on the girls’ athletic field. The field could be flooded, and had been; now it was a perfectly smooth piece of ice and upon it those of the older girls who were already good skaters, had a chance to learn the mysteries of hockey. ”

“ And in most places hockey is not taken very seriously: it is a charming and heat-producing scramble to take part in when the out-door day is drawing to a close and the chill of the evening beginning to set in ”

“ But Hugh had been wise to this fact, and posted Mr. Leonard, the coach; who, meanwhile, taught them a few new little wrinkles that were calculated to disturb the calculations of Belleville when the time came for the meeting. As in football, ice hockey presents a fruitful field for diplomacy and clever tactics; and the wisest general usually manages to carry his team to victory over those who may be much more nimble skaters and even smarter with their sticks, but not so able in the line of strategy. ”

“ Just as that regiment whose soldiers rely upon one another is a better one than another, in which the members have no confidence in their comrades, so, in a hockey team it is absolutely necessary that each player should be able to depend upon his confrères.
A team should feel that it can defeat any seven that opposes it, and each individual man of a team ought to believe that, if necessary, he can pass any one of his adversaries. ”

“ The Academy hockey team, of which Jumbo was the leader, was working out a fine game and making its prowess felt among the rival teams of the Tri-State Interscholastic League. But hockey did not interest Quiz; for though he could almost sleep on a bicycle without falling over, when he put on a pair of skates you might have thought that he was trying to turn somersaults or describe interrogation-points in the air. ”

“ But as the game developed, many changes were found necessary in adapting it to the requirements of a rink, and the rules now used by the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada are in the main original with it.
Starting from Montreal, the game has made its way to Halifax and St. John on the east, and to Ottawa and Toronto on the west, and from the enthusiasm with which it has been taken up at these cities, it actually threatens to displace tobogganing and snow-shoeing in the affections of the young men. ”

“ The greatest symptom of individual progress is a sincere love for the work in hand; advancement follows naturally upon a faithful apprenticeship.
The Speed Game HOCKEY, king of speed games, is Canada’s national sport. The pace of it, the skill and thrill of it appeal to the youth of Canada. No other boys in the world could ever play hockey quite as Canadian youngsters do. Hockey has developed to suit a temperament which expresses itself most completely in this game. It is the spirit of Vimy Ridge and Festubert that crops out strongest in a fast rush down the ice with the puck. ”

“ A few years ago, the sport was known only in a few cities of the Dominion—now, from far east Halifax to frigid Winnipeg the glorious game is played; most of our neighboring American cities boast of a hockey club, and even in distant Europe, teams have been organized in Glasgow, London and Paris. It is a regular occurrence for clubs to send their representatives thousands of miles to meet their adversaries in a friendly match. Teams from Manitoba and Nova Scotia have repeatedly visited Montreal, and clubs from the latter place have returned the compliment. ”

“ EVERY game, any game, aids considerably in developing a player's mind, and for hockey, a follower of the game may claim all the good effects in mental training that any other branch of sport provides, and more. The very adhering to the rules, the spirit of fair play that characterizes a manly game, the overcoming of all fears and all difficulties, the modest victory, the frank acknowledgement of defeat, all tend to build up, to educate, the mental faculties, just as the long practice, the swift race, and the hard check help to develope the physical man. ”

“ All the young folk were soon on the ice, the boys starting a hockey game at the far end, and the girls circling around in pairs at the end nearest to the fire.
“That’s what Mrs. Case, our physical instructor, says we ought to learn,” said Laura, watching the boys.
“And it’s jolly good fun, too,” cried Bobby. 79
“But suppose you turned your ankle, or fell down and tore your dress?” suggested Nellie. “I believe hockey on the ice is too rough.”
“No game needs to be rough,” declared Laura. “That isn’t the spirit of athletics. Didn’t we learn how to play basketball without being rough?” ”

“ Every fellow seemed to start up as if on springs, and it was indeed a pretty sight to see all those colored jerseys beginning to flit hither and thither over the ice, each young athlete ready to exert himself to the limit in order to accomplish the task falling to his hand.
Hockey sticks circled through the air, or were held in readiness for a stroke, as those whose hands gripped the same darted down toward the inoffensive puck, with hostile intent.
Frank had found himself opposed to Coots in the start as the puck was "faced," with the shoe of a hockey stick on either side. ”