Ice hockey is a fast-paced team sport played on ice. In hockey, skaters use hockey sticks to hit a hard puck into the opponent's net. Hockey is popular in North America, Europe and Russia. Hockey is an official Winter Olympic sport and is the national winter sport in Canada. Hockey is nicknamed "the fastest sport in the world". There are many theories about where and how hockey began. But modern hockey is believed to originate from the game of field hockey, first played in ancient Greece, Egypt and Persia. And in time the game spread north to Europe and then west to the Americas, where Native Americans were already playing a stick-and-ball game the French called lacrosse. Meanwhile, in Europe ice skating became very popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, and ice games began to be played, including a Dutch version of golf and an ice version of hurling, an Irish stick-and-ball game. the paintings show an early form of hockey without standard rules that was played in Nova Scotia called shinney. Today Shinney is a popular Canadian term for an informal type of hockey. Around the mid-1800s, the Halifax Rules were enacted, considered the first standardized rules of ice hockey. In the early 1870s James G. Creighton, of Nova Scotia, brought the rules to Montreal, Canada, where they were used in the first organized ice hockey game. On March 3, 1875, the first organized hockey game was played between Creighton and McGill University students against Fred Torrence's Victoria team at the Victoria Skating Rink in Montreal. In 1877 Creighton published the first seven rules of hockey, and McGill University in Montreal formed the first organized ice hockey team. In 1883, the hockey...... middle of paper......ey League was the first to hire professionals. The league joined teams from Michigan and Ontario to form the first fully professional league, the International Professional Hockey League (IPHL) in 1904. The IPHL hired players from Canada and in response; Canadian leagues began paying players. The IPHL, cut off from its greatest source of players, disbanded in 1907. In 1910 the National Hockey Association (NHA) was founded in Montreal. The NHA refined the rules and was reorganized as the National Hockey League (NHL) in 1917, and in 1924 the NHL expanded into the United States with the founding of the Boston Bruins.Works CitedIIHF. History. December 18, 2013.McKinley, Michael. Hockey: A People's Story. McClelland & Stewart, 2009. The story of people where people's memories and history come together. Origins, growth and changes in the game of ice hockey. December 18th 2013.