NHL Tickets
NHL
NHL is short for National Hockey League, a professional ice hockey league comprising of 30 teams in North America. The league champion at the end gets to earn The Stanley Cup, which is the oldest professional sports trophy in North America. It is also one of North America primary professional sports league. It was basically founded in 1909, as the National Hockey Association in 1909 and then later formalized by its present name. The league initially had four teams but now currently, it has 30 teams. 6 of these teams are based in Canada, while 24 are from USA. Due to a labor dispute, the complete 2004-05 season was cancelled, yet the league re-entered the scene and currently enjoys record-high sponsorships and TV viewer ship.
The league was organized by three former NHA franchises. The NHL attracts competent players from all over the world. At present, professionals from 20 various countries are part of this league. Since the sport and league originated in Canada, therefore it is not strange that Canadians have always comprised more than half of the players in the league. The last 25 years have seen a rising percentage of American and European players joining the NHL. In the first decade, the NHL's teams were able to win many matches though they had to make a lot of effort to stay in scene. The Stanley Cup was won by an external team only once in 1925, and the rest of the times, the cup was retained by National Hockey League.
In January 1958, the first black member in the NHL played in a game from NHL who participated in 45 games in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In1967, six new teams joined the NHL umbrella as a part of expansion plans. Then three years further down the road, two more teams were added to NHL.
NHL is the only league compared to others within North America that has its teams playing in the capital cities of 2 countries, Ottawa and Washington DC. The existent set-up of the league makes it divided into two conferences each comprising of 3 divisions with one division having 5 teams. This organizational structure was planned in 2000-2001.