National Hockey League is the foremost professional ice hockey league in the world, and one of the North American major professional sports leagues. This league has history of around ninety years. The league was founded in 1917 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada with four teams, and through series of expansions, contractions and relocations the league is now compiled of thirty teams, twenty four of which belong to United States and six in Canada.

Origin of game played important role in the formulation of NHL. Tracing back the origin of this game will lead us to know more about NHL. Most historians place the roots of hockey in the chilly climes of northern Europe, particularly Britain and France, where field hockey was a popular summer sport for more than 500 years ago. When the ponds and lakes froze in winter, it was not unusual for the athletes who fancied that sport to play a version of it on ice.

In 18th century hockey took hold in England and at that time this game was known as bandy, local players used to scrambled around the town's frozen meadowlands, swatting a wooden or cork ball, known as a cat or kit, with wooden sticks made from the willow trees.

Not surprisingly, the earliest North American games were played in Canada. Ice hockey also came from Canada. British soldiers organized contests on frozen ponds in different cities in Canada and on the other hand universities students of Montreal began facing off against each other in downtown ice rink. The continent's first hockey league was said to have been launched in Kingston, Ontario, in 1885, and it included four teams.

NHL was formed accidentally after 1st World War when the officials of National Hockey Associations (NHA) met in Canada to talk about NHA's future. But the meeting eventually led to the creations of National Hockey League NHL. As the game instigated from Canada, Canadians have historically constituted a large majority of players in NHL. Even the first championship for prestigious Stanley Cup started in Canada organized by the English governor Lord Stanley in Canada.

First decade of NHL proved to be successful and sport got famous all around the continent. In 1925 NHL started the expansion process through which many US base teams became the part of the league. In the 1926–27 season, raising the number of teams in the NHL to 10. In the mid of 1960s Western Hockey League became the rival of NHL and this rivarly later cause further expansions in NHL. At the end of 2000 NHL is now consisted of 30 teams.

The NHL is divided into two fifteen-team conferences, each of which consists of three five-team divisions. The NHL seasonal structure is as;

• Regular season which starts from October and ends in April in predefined schedule. In this each division is crowned as division champion and overall leader awarded the President's Trophy.
• Division champions qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs. It is elimination tournament where two teams fight to win best of seven series in order to advance in next round.
• The remaining teams fight to become the Stanley Cup champion.

The National Hockey League presents many awards throughout the year some of them are as under;
 The team with high points in regular season awarded as President's Trophy.
Art Ross Trophy for the league scoring champion
Maurice 'Rocket' Richard Trophy for goal-scoring leader.
William M. Jennings Trophy for the goal-keepers.
For most vaulable player the prestigious indiviual award is Hart Memorial Trophy. This is awarded annually, through voting process.
The top coach wins the Jack Adams Awards.
The Vezina trophy is for best goal-keeper throughout the year.
The Lady Byng Memorial Trophy is awarded to the player deemed to combine the highest degree of skill and sportsmenship.

National Hockey League follows the general rules of ice hockey, these rules are slightly different from those which are formulated by the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF). The league has removed the offside pass or two-line pass rule. Furthermore, the league reinstated the tag-up offside which allows an attacking player a chance to get back onside by returning to the neutral zone. Another different rule of NHL from IIHF is called icing. According to NHL a linesman stops the play due to icing if defending player touches the puck before and attacking player is able to, in contrast to IIHF where play is stopped when puck crosses the goal line. There are different rules in concern with penalities. The NHL also created a stringent anti-doping policy recently in September of 2005.

The NHL is among the four major leagues in USA, along with base ball league, basket ball league and football league. Hockey is not as popular as the other leagues are and that is why the number of fans of hockey are not in big number. It has small viewership, and least sponsorship. As this is the only league among other four which consists of USA and Canada. In contrast hockey is the most popular game in Canada and so is the league. The fans of NHL are well educated and that is why the ticket prices are traditionally higher than other sports.

Hockey still has a lot of potention and proper do and don't can make NHL one of the popular league. There are some things which need to be reconsidered by officials of NHL for improvement and increase the popularity. NHL should take care of quality broadcasting, try to catch more sponsors and provide the best entertainment through the sport to the viewers. Better and new policies can make NHL worthy.