Ice hockey is a Canadian game whose origins started as a field game going way back to the fifth century B.C.  It started when French explorers were traveling up the ST. Lawrence River.  They saw Indians hitting a hard ball with sticks.  Then, after the French explorers found out about it then Ireland, Scotland, England, Russia, and Scandinavia all produced the same game.  Then, a while later Dutch invented the first metal ice skates in the early 17^th century.  People could hardly even skate on them they were so bad.  Hockey progressed over time; they came out with more equipment.  Later, Ontario claims it hosted the first recorded hockey game in 1830.  The term ice hockey was first recorded in 1875 describing a game played by two nine-man teams, the rules were a combination of field hockey, lacrosse, and polo.  The game progressed and by 1881 they had many rinks built for ice hockey.  If ice hockey was made, they sure had to have some rules or everybody would get killed.  The rules called for no body checks, a face-off when the puck went behind the goal, a two hour playing time, nine players, and they had to have a referee to give and restrict the rules.  After a while had gone passed, the league switched to a 7-man game in 1886.  The first official Stanley Cup Match was held on March.22, 1894 in Montreal between the Montreal hockey club and the Ottawa Capitals.  Montreal won 3-1 in front of 5,000 fans.  After a while the Stanley Cup had trouble keeping up with the game because it had to keep getting bigger.  There was no such thing as a professional hockey league until November.22, 1917.  ON that day, five men met in a hotel room in Montreal and organized a league of pro players to be called the “National Hockey League”.  Frank Calder a 30 year old transplanted British school teacher and sportswriter was named the N.H.L’s first president.  As ice hockey evolved into a more organized game its equipment improved.  But, the sport was very dangerous and people kept getting hurt so they had to think of something to do.  So they kept coming out with new equipment and it started to help.  In 1930 they came out with a mask for goalies.  It wasn’t for a little while after that when they invented helmets for players too.  Then hardly anybody got hurt.  The game went on, they changed some rules every once and a while.  And today they are still trying to come up with new equipment and rules that can change in the future.