Luiz Valente writes:
 
>I'd always heard that the first college hockey game in the United States
>was a 6-0 Brown victory over Harvard in December of 1897. There's a
>plaque in Meehan Auditorium commemorating the event. Still, hockey at
>Johns Hopkins sounds almost too bizarre to be true. Are you sure it
>wasn't field hockey? :-)
 
Until fairly recently, Brown and Harvard claimed to have played
the first game. Yale started touting the Johns Hopkins game, so the
AHCA (not the ACHA :-)) paid to have someone do the research. They
found a Yale Alumni Weekly describing the game against Johns Hopkins
and, consequently, the Centennial was moved from 1997 to 1996. Prior
to the Yale/Johns Hopkins game, several schools played games against
Canadian or local amateur teams in the transition from "ice polo" to
ice hockey (no, horses were NOT involved in the former - don't know
the rules, but they were supposedly different). Brown/Harvard remains
the longest running continuous rivalry in college hockey (and, IMO,
one of the very best).
 
Geoff Howell
Drop the Puck Magazine
 
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