The National Hockey League
The National Hockey League came after the quietus of NHA (National Hockey Association) in the year 1917, after a lot of disputes in the Canadian Hockey Leagues. NHL is the leading hockey league across the globe. The league currently has around thirty hockey teams. National Hockey League is one among the top four sport organizations of North America. It is a non profit organization, with its foundation at New York.
The main function of the National Hockey League (NHL) is to form rules and regulations for the game, supervise the game, control the teams proprietorship also to collect licensing charges for merchandise. Another important duty of the NHL is to negotiate the fees from the teams that have a control over broadcasting the game in the regional channels.
Apart from the thirty hockey teams, of which 6 teams are situated in Canada and the other twenty four are based in the United States, five semi-pro hockey coalitions and minor hockey teams also come under the governance of National Hockey League. The Boston Bruins was the first hockey team to join the league in the year 1924.
The National Hockey League has the world’s greatest hockey players. Some of the most popular hockey teams of the world are a part of the league. At present the league has players coming from nearly twenty different countries. However, most of the players have Canada as their origin. The reason for this is because, the origin of the league is in Canada. The league has set high standards of play when compared to the other leagues around the world. The main rival of National Hockey League is World Hockey Association which was formed in the year 1972.
NHL follows the same rules as followed in Ice Hockey. The game is played on hockey rink. Hockey rink is something like a rectangle circled with corners and these corners are covered by walls. The Stanley Cup was initially handled by the National Hockey Association, and when National Hockey League was formed, NHL reserved the rights of the Stanley Cup. And Montreal Canadians take the pride of winning twenty four Stanley Cups. Currently, NHL has divided its teams into two main conferences. Each conference is further divided into three divisions and each of these three divisions have five teams each. Some of the popular teams of NHL are New Jersey Devils, Detroit RedWings, Buffalo Sabres, Dallas Stars, Los Angeles Kings, Tampa Bay Lightening, Florida Panthers, Edmonton Oliers, Columbus BlueJackets, New York Islanders, New York Rangers, Ottawa Senators, Calgary Flames, St. Louis Blues, Minnesota Wild, Pheonix Coyotes, San Jose Sharks, Washington Capitals are some of the teams.
At the National Hockey League, proper records are maintained. They also track the performance all the the players. And they rate them based on their performance. Apart from maintaining the records and performance of the players and teams, they have proper records of all the events being conducted by NHL. Events here include the games conducted, future schedules and everything. Proper accounts are also maintained.