1917: NHL Plays First Games

On This Day in Sports: December 19, 1917

On December 19, 1917, the National Hockey League played the first two regular-season games in its history. The Montreal Wanderers defeated Toronto 10-9, while the Montreal Canadiens beat the Ottawa Senators 7-4 on the league’s opening night. Two games opened the league schedule. The Wanderers beat Toronto 10-9. Those details establish the result and its setting, but the day’s importance came from the larger historical pressure surrounding the competition and the people who carried it through.

Club owners had formed the NHL less than a month earlier after suspending the National Hockey Association. Four active teams entered a split 24-game schedule during wartime Canada. Montreal defeated Ottawa 7-4. Dave Ritchie scored the NHL’s first goal. Together, those points show how preparation, rules, institutions and public expectations shaped the circumstances before the decisive action began. They also separate the documented background from later legend and retrospective interpretation.

Dave Ritchie scored the league’s first goal in Montreal, and Joe Malone recorded five for the Canadiens in Ottawa. Harry Hyland also scored five for the Wanderers in the night’s 19-goal game. Joe Malone and Harry Hyland each scored five goals. Toronto won the Stanley Cup that season. The immediate result therefore involved more than a single score or statistic: it changed a record, championship, career or institution and gave contemporary audiences a clear reason to understand that the moment was unusual.

The Wanderers soon folded after their arena burned, while Toronto won the Stanley Cup. Despite early instability, the two games established the record line from which modern NHL statistics and seasons are counted. Seen from today, the event remains useful because it connects a measurable sports outcome with the systems around it—teammates, opponents, officials, venues, media and rules. The outcome was not inevitable, and its meaning did not end when play stopped. Preserving the exact date and qualifications helps explain why later generations still return to it. It also prevents a famous image or headline from replacing the fuller story of what actually happened. The best sports history holds achievement and limitation together, showing both the performance itself and the conditions that made it possible. That broader view preserves context without taking attention away from the people who performed under pressure. Contemporary reports and official records provide the firmest foundation for remembering the achievement without exaggerating what the participants could know at the time. In that sense, December 19, 1917 still offers a focused view of how athletic excellence, public memory and institutional change can meet in a single day.