Professional ice hockey (hockey) is the competition of ice hockey in which participants are paid to play. Professional competition began in North America in the United States—in Pennsylvania and Michigan—and in Canada around 1900. Professional ice hockey expanded across Canada and the United States and eventually to many other countries. There are major leagues around the world, including the National Hockey League in North America, the Kontinental Hockey League in Europe and Asia, and the Swedish Hockey League in Europe, as well as minor leagues such as the American Hockey League and ECHL in North America, and the Ligue Nord-Américaine de Hockey in Canada. High-level professional hockey is also present in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Finland and Switzerland; professional hockey is also played in many other countries, as diverse as Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Austria, Australia and Japan. The major professional women's league is the Professional Women's Hockey League, which began play in 2024.
Development Professional hockey developed in the United States and Canada around the turn of the 20th century. Houghton, Michigan, was formally considered the "birthplace of professional hockey"; however, recent investigations have proven otherwise, beginning with the establishment of the International Professional Hockey League, the first fully professional hockey league, in Houghton in 1904 following conversations between James R. Dee from Houghton, Michigan and representatives of the Western Pennsylvania Hockey League, a semi-professional hockey league started in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1896. The International Professional Hockey League began play in 1904 with teams from Houghton, Michigan (Houghton-Portage Lakes), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh Professionals), Calumet, Michigan (Calumet-Laurium Miners), Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario (Sault Ste. Marie Marlboros), and Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan (Michigan Soo Indians).
Prior to 1904, playing for pay was not favored by major hockey circuits, as they were established as purely amateur organizations. Players who were found to be paid were marked as professional and were banned by leagues such as the Ontario Hockey Association (OHA), Canadian teams were prohibited from playing in Pittsburgh, and the Canadian teams who played games against professional teams from Northern Michigan were banished by the OHA, including the two teams from Sault Ste. Marie, the Sault Ste. Marie Marlboros and Michigan Soo Indians in 1903-04. Some banned players in Ontario considered starting a professional team in 1898, and there was a proposal to start a professional league in western Ontario in 1899, but professional hockey did not take off in Canada until 1907 with the establishment of the Ontario Professional Hockey League.
The earliest known instance of hockey players playing publicly for pay occurred in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when a 1902 investigation by the Ontario Hockey Association (OHA) revealed that players on Pittsburgh-based teams received payment in 1901 and 1902, leading the OHA to ban any club from Pittsburgh from participating in their association, claiming there was "ample and undeniable proof" that clubs in Pittsburgh were "purely professional, paying straight salaries to their players." The 1903-04 Portage Lakes Hockey Club is regarded as the first team to pay each of the players on the team, while players in prior years in the Western Pennsylvania Hockey League were compensated via a mix of a small monetary payment and jobs in the Pittsburgh community, with the 30 players of the then four-team Western Pennsylvania Hockey League each receiving a weekly salary ranging from $10 () to $20 () per week in January of 1903, depending upon their agreements with James Wallace Conant, which resulted in the Ontario Hockey Association considering each of these teams as a "purely professional team".
Beginning with the start of 1904 season the semi-professional Pittsburgh-based teams of the Western Pennsylvania Hockey League consolidated to become Pittsburgh Professionals and joined with the Houghton-Portage Lakes to become two of the original five teams of the International Professional Hockey League, marking the beginning of fully professional hockey in North America.
By country Canada
Professional leagues emerged from amateur leagues. In 1904, the predominantly U.S.-based International Professional Hockey League (IPHL) hosted the first Canadian professional team, the Canadian Soo. The league hired many amateur players away from Canada, causing the amateur leagues to convert to all-out professionalism or allow professional players in order to compete for the top players. The first Canadian professional league was the Manitoba Professional Hockey League (MPHL), formed in 1905 from member teams of the amateur Manitoba Hockey Association. The Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association (ECAHA), formed from prior amateur hockey leagues, emerged in 1906. The ECAHA allowed teams to have professional players from the start, despite its name. In 1907, the Ontario Professional Hockey League was formed. The competition for players increased salaries, a factor in the demise of the IPHL in 1907 and the temporary end of professional hockey in the United States. In 1908, the ECAHA became fully professional, as the ECAHA's amateur teams separated from the league and competed for the new Allan Cup, a new challenge cup instituted for amateur teams. The ECAHA, now fully professional, renamed itself the ECHA. The MPHL folded in 1909, the OPHL in 1908, leaving the ECHA as the only 'elite' professional league in Canada.
In northern Ontario, silver mining had made small towns affluent, and mines in the area hired professional players for their ice hockey teams. By 1910, several teams in the area had hired enough professional players from the ECHA, that the teams, notably the Renfrew Creamery Kings, wanted to join the ECHA and compete for the Stanley Cup. Rebuffed by the ECHA, the mine owners formed the National Hockey Association (NHA) in 1910, splitting the ECHA's teams between the Canadian Hockey Association and the NHA. The CHA dissolved after less than a month, with some teams absorbed by the NHA. After one season of extravagant salaries, the NHA team owners imposed a salary cap, causing dissension amongst the players, and closed most of the teams in mining towns.
In 1911, Lester and Frank Patrick, who had played in the NHA, formed the rival Pacific Coast Hockey Association in British Columbia and took the opportunity to sign many of the NHA's players, notably Cyclone Taylor. In 1912, the NHA expanded west to Toronto, becoming a six-team league from Toronto to Quebec City. While the leagues competed for players, competition for the Stanley Cup brought them together for annual playoffs, starting in 1915. In November 1917, the NHA itself suspended operations and several NHA owners formed the National Hockey League (NHL) following a dispute between NHA team owners. The new league began play in December that year with four Canadian teams. The NHL continued the annual Stanley Cup playoffs with the PCHA.
In the west, the Western Canada Hockey League was formed in 1921 from existing teams in Alberta and Saskatchewan. The annual Stanley Cup playoffs now became a three-way championship, alternating in location between the west and the east. The PCHA would merge with the WCHL in 1924 to form the Western Hockey League before the league ceased operations in 1926. The NHL, having expanded to the U.S.A. and now with ten teams, bought out the players' contracts of the WHL and took control of the Stanley Cup, forming Canadian and American divisions; it also brought in one WHL team, the Victoria Cougars, and relocated it to the U.S. to eventually become the modern Detroit Red Wings.
The NHL lost Canadian teams in the 1920s and 1930s, leading to a rise in senior-level amateur teams and leagues in cities such as Quebec City and Ottawa, former NHL cities. After World War II, several of these teams became professional in the Quebec Hockey League, which included several stars such as Jean Beliveau and Willie O'Ree. In the 1950s, with the rise of NHL television broadcasts, such as those on Hockey Night in Canada, attendance suffered and the minor professional leagues folded or merged to survive. A new Western Hockey League was formed on the west coast with teams in several cities including Vancouver. The WHL's Vancouver Canucks organization would join the NHL in 1970. Since the demise of the QHL, the American Hockey League (AHL) has had Canadian teams, starting with the Quebec Aces.
In 1972, the World Hockey Association was formed with professional teams in Edmonton, Ottawa, Quebec City and Winnipeg. Ottawa relocated to Toronto after one season, but the other teams survived until the WHA merged with the NHL in 1979, with Edmonton, Quebec City and Winnipeg joined the NHL, along with the Hartford, Connecticut-based New England Whalers, which joined the NHL as the Hartford Whalers. The inclusion of all three Canadian WHA teams was a key point of contention in merger talks between the NHL and WHA, and only after the NHL agreed to that stipulation was agreed upon did the merger happen. In 1980, the Atlanta franchise moved to Calgary. In the 1990s, the Quebec and Winnipeg franchises relocated to the U.S., to Denver and Phoenix respectively, while Ottawa rejoined the NHL in 1992; the NHL returned to Winnipeg in 2011, and a proposal to return to Quebec currently sits in purgatory.
On February 16, 2005, the NHL became the first major professional team sport in North America to cancel an entire season because of a labor dispute. Play resumed again in the fall of 2005. During the dispute, controversy arose over the decision not to award the Stanley Cup; some considered this decision a violation of the terms of the Stanley Cup's handover ("Deed of Gift") to the NHL. Following a legal challenge, it was agreed that the Cup's trustees could award the Cup to a non-NHL team, although this did not actually occur.
Czechoslovakia
In Czechoslovakia, the Czechoslovak Extraliga was the elite ice hockey league in Czechoslovakia from 1930 until 1993, when the country split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
In the Czech Republic, the Czech Extraliga is rooted in the Czechoslovak Extraliga. The Czech Extraliga was spun off in 1993 following the administrative break-up of Czechoslovakia. The Czech Extraliga is the highest-level ice hockey league in the Czech Republic. The name of the league is leased a general sponsor and changes frequently. In the 2003-04, 2004–05 and 2005–06 seasons it was known as the Tipsport Extraliga; for 2001-01 and 2001-02 it was called the Český Telecom Extraliga, and in 1999-00 the Staropramen Extraliga. During the 2006-07 season it was known as the O2 Extraliga. Hockey Club Lev Praha (stylized as HC LEV Praha) is a professional ice hockey team located in Prague, Czech Republic, which debuts in the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) in 2012–13.