The Early Leagues (1800s-1949)

When Canadians first began pushing a rubber puck on a sheet of ice with sticks, there were few standardized rules that applied from city to city. Slowly, as more teams came into existence in the 1890s, leagues were formed from Atlantic Canada to the Northwest Territories.

Hockey originated as a strictly amateur game.  During the early 1900s.  Soon however, elite teams began paying players under the table. Within years, professionalism had invaded the game, and fractured amateur leagues. Teams left amateur leagues to help form new pro leagues. Entrepreneurs, looking to make a buck, formed a series of pro leagues across the country, each competing with each other in an effort to sign the best players from around Canada.

By the end of the First World War, competing leagues based in Western and Eastern Canada had created a high-priced market for players. Top stars could command salaries in the tens of thousands of dollars, a figure that was inflated thanks to the invasion of new American clubs in the fledgling National Hockey League during the 1920s.

In this section, we will look at some of the amateur and pro leagues that featured prominent Albertans and changed the game in this province. From the Alberta Amateur Hockey Association to the scandal-ridden Big-4 league that disguised former pros as amateurs to the failed professional Western Canada Hockey League, the first half of the 20th century brought more than a few colourful organizations to the province.

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