The National Hockey League is a professional ice hockey organization in North America, established on November 26, 1917, at the Windsor Hotel in Montreal. It was born out of the collapse of its predecessor, the National Hockey Association, after team owners could not resolve ongoing disputes with Toronto Blueshirts owner Eddie Livingstone. Four franchises — the Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Wanderers, Ottawa Senators, and Quebec Bulldogs — voted to suspend the NHA and form an entirely new league, with Frank Calder elected as its first president. The first games were played on December 19, 1917, and the league initially competed alongside other organizations for the Stanley Cup, a trophy that predated the NHL itself by over two decades. That changed in 1926 when rival leagues collapsed, leaving the NHL as the sole competition for the Cup, a status it has held ever since. The league expanded rapidly through the 1920s, adding American franchises like the Boston Bruins, New York Rangers, and Detroit Cougars, but the Great Depression and World War II took a heavy toll, causing several teams to fold or relocate.
The NHL is the premier ice hockey league in the world
By the 1942-43 season, the NHL had contracted to just six teams: the Boston Bruins, Chicago Black Hawks, Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens, New York Rangers, and Toronto Maple Leafs. This lineup remained unchanged for 25 years, a period now celebrated as the Original Six era. It was a time of fierce rivalries, legendary players, and a deeply passionate fan base concentrated across a handful of major North American cities. In 1945, Maurice "Rocket" Richard became the first player to score 50 goals in a 50-game season, and he later led the Canadiens to five consecutive Stanley Cup championships between 1956 and 1960, a record no team has since matched. The Original Six era has been romanticized by hockey fans and the press for generations, representing a time when the sport felt intimate, intense, and defined by a small group of iconic franchises competing at the highest level year after year.
By the mid-1960s, the desire for a U.S. television contract and fears of a rival league prompted the NHL's first major expansion, doubling the league from 6 to 12 teams for the 1967-68 season by adding the Los Angeles Kings, Minnesota North Stars, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, California Seals, and St. Louis Blues. Further expansions followed steadily over the following decades, and in 1979 the league absorbed four franchises from the rival World Hockey Association, including the Edmonton Oilers, who would go on to become one of the most dominant dynasties in sports history behind superstar Wayne Gretzky. Gretzky led Edmonton to four Stanley Cup championships in the 1980s before his landmark 1988 trade to the Los Angeles Kings dramatically expanded the sport's popularity across the United States. Between 1991 and 2000 the league grew to 30 teams, then added the Vegas Golden Knights in 2017 and the Seattle Kraken in 2021 as its 31st and 32nd franchises. In 2024, the Arizona Coyotes sold their hockey assets to a new ownership group in Salt Lake City, forming what is now the Utah Mammoth, maintaining the total at 32 teams.
Today the NHL's 32 teams are split evenly across two conferences and four divisions. The Eastern Conference contains the Atlantic and Metropolitan divisions, while the Western Conference contains the Central and Pacific divisions. Each team plays an 82-game regular season from October through April, and at the end of the regular season 16 teams qualify for the playoffs, with eight from each conference. The top three teams in each division qualify automatically, and two wild-card teams per conference fill the remaining spots. All playoff rounds are best-of-seven series, with no shootouts — tied games are resolved by sudden-death overtime periods of 20 minutes each, producing some of the most dramatic moments in the sport. The two conference champions then meet in the Stanley Cup Final, competing for the oldest professional sports trophy in North America. The Montreal Canadiens remain the most decorated franchise in league history with 25 championships.
Sources: National Hockey League. NHL.com. https://www.nhl.com Stanley Cup Playoffs. NHL.com. https://www.nhl.com/info/standings-info/playoff-format
