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The National Hockey League is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the premier professional ice hockey league in the world, and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada. The Stanley Cup, the oldest professional sports trophy in North America, is awarded annually to the league playoff champion at the end of each season. The NHL is the fifth-wealthiest professional sport league in the world by revenue, after the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the English Premier League (EPL).
Wayne Douglas Gretzky is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player and former head coach. He played 20 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) for four teams from 1979 to 1999. Nicknamed "the Great One", he has been called the greatest hockey player ever by many sportswriters, players, the NHL itself, and by The Hockey News, based on extensive surveys of hockey writers, ex-players, general managers and coaches. Gretzky is the leading goal scorer, assist producer and point scorer in NHL history, and has more assists in his career than any other player scored total points. He is the only NHL player to total over 200 points in one season, a feat he accomplished four times. In addition, Gretzky tallied over 100 points in 16 professional seasons, 14 of them consecutive. At the time of his retirement in 1999, he held 61 NHL records: 40 regular season records, 15 playoff records, and 6 All-Star records.
The Stanley Cup is the championship trophy awarded annually to the National Hockey League (NHL) playoff champion. It is the oldest existing trophy to be awarded to a professional sports franchise in North America, and the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) considers it to be one of the "most important championships available to the sport". The trophy was commissioned in 1892 as the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup and is named after Lord Stanley of Preston, the Governor General of Canada, who donated it as an award to Canada's top-ranking amateur ice hockey club. The entire Stanley family supported the sport, the sons and daughters all playing and promoting the game. The first Cup was awarded in 1893 to Montreal Hockey Club, and winners from 1893 to 1914 were determined by challenge games and league play. Professional teams first became eligible to challenge for the Stanley Cup in 1906. In 1915, the National Hockey Association (NHA) and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA), the two main professional ice hockey organizations, reached a gentlemen's agreement in which their respective champions would face each other annually for the Stanley Cup. It was established as the de facto championship trophy of the NHL in 1926 and then the de jure NHL championship prize in 1947.
The Hockey Hall of Fame is a museum and hall of fame located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Dedicated to the history of ice hockey, it holds exhibits about players, teams, National Hockey League (NHL) records, memorabilia and NHL trophies, including the Stanley Cup. Founded in Kingston, Ontario, the Hockey Hall of Fame was established in 1943 under the leadership of James T. Sutherland. The first class of honoured members was inducted in 1945, before the Hall of Fame had a permanent location. It moved to Toronto in 1958 after the NHL withdrew its support for the International Hockey Hall of Fame in Kingston, Ontario, due to funding issues. Its first permanent building opened at Exhibition Place in 1961. The hall was relocated in 1993, and is now in Downtown Toronto, inside Brookfield Place, and a historic Bank of Montreal building. The Hockey Hall of Fame has hosted International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) exhibits and the IIHF Hall of Fame since 1998.
James Naismith was a Canadian-American physical educator, physician, Christian chaplain, sports coach, and inventor of the game of basketball. After moving to the United States, he wrote the original basketball rule book and founded the University of Kansas basketball program. Naismith lived to see basketball adopted as an Olympic demonstration sport in 1904 and as an official event at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, as well as the birth of the National Invitation Tournament (1938) and the NCAA Tournament (1939).
The Canadian Hockey League is an umbrella organization that represents the three Canada-based major junior ice hockey leagues. The CHL was founded in 1975 as the Canadian Major Junior Hockey League, and is composed of its three member leagues, the Western Hockey League, Ontario Hockey League, and Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. For the 2021–22 season, its three leagues and 60 teams represent nine Canadian provinces as well as four American states.
The Western Hockey League (WHL) is a major junior ice hockey league based in Western Canada and the Northwestern United States. The WHL is one of three leagues that constitutes the Canadian Hockey League (CHL) as the highest level of junior hockey in Canada. Teams play for the Ed Chynoweth Cup, with the winner moving on to play for the Memorial Cup, Canada's national junior championship. WHL teams have won the Memorial Cup 19 times since the league became eligible to compete for the trophy. Many players have been drafted from WHL teams, and have found success at various levels of professional hockey, including the National Hockey League (NHL).
The Memorial Cup is the national championship of the Canadian Hockey League, a consortium of three major junior ice hockey leagues operating in Canada and parts of the United States. It is a four-team round-robin tournament played between the champions of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL), Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL) and Western Hockey League (WHL), and a fourth, hosting team, which alternates between the three leagues annually. The Memorial Cup trophy was established by Captain James T. Sutherland to honour those who died in service during World War I. It was rededicated during the 2010 tournament to honour all soldiers who died fighting for Canada in any conflict.
The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football, abbreviated as CONCACAF is one of FIFA's six continental governing bodies for association football. Its 41 member associations represent countries and territories mainly in North America, including the Caribbean and Central America, and due to geopolitical reasons, three nations from the Guianas subregion of South America—Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. The CONCACAF's primary functions are to organize competitions for national teams and clubs, and to conduct the World Cup and Women's World Cup qualifying tournaments.
Stephen John Nash is a Canadian professional basketball coach and former player who is the head coach of the Brooklyn Nets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played 18 seasons in the NBA, where he was an eight-time All-Star and a seven-time All-NBA selection. Nash was a two-time NBA Most Valuable Player while playing for the Phoenix Suns.
Lionel Pretoria Conacher, MP, nicknamed "The Big Train", was a Canadian athlete and politician. Voted the country's top athlete of the first half of the 20th century, he won championships in numerous sports. His first passion was football; he was a member of the 1921 Grey Cup champion Toronto Argonauts. He was a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team that won the International League championship in 1926. In hockey, he won a Memorial Cup in 1920, and the Stanley Cup twice: with the Chicago Black Hawks in 1934 and the Montreal Maroons in 1935. Additionally, he won wrestling, boxing and lacrosse championships during his playing career. He is one of three players, including Joe Miller and Carl Voss, to have their names engraved on both the Grey Cup and Stanley Cup.
Sports in Canada consist of a wide variety of games. The most common sports are ice hockey, lacrosse, gridiron football, soccer, basketball, curling and baseball, with ice hockey and lacrosse being the official winter and summer sports, respectively.
John Terrence Catliff is a Canadian former professional soccer player, who played as a striker. He is the second highest goalscorer of all time of the Canadian national team, with 19 goals between 1984 and 1994.
The Triple Gold Club is the group of ice hockey players and coaches who have won an Olympic Games gold medal, a World Championship gold medal, and the Stanley Cup, the championship trophy of the National Hockey League (NHL). The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) considers them to be "the three most important championships available to the sport".
The Central Canada Hockey League (CCHL) is a Canadian Junior "A" ice hockey league operating in eastern Ontario, Canada. The league is sanctioned by the Hockey Eastern Ontario and Hockey Canada and is a member of the Canadian Junior Hockey League. The winner of the CCHL playoffs competes for the Fred Page Cup — the Eastern Region championship of the Canadian Junior Hockey League — with the winners of the Quebec Junior AAA Hockey League and the Maritime Junior A Hockey League. The winner of the Fred Page Cup then moves on to compete for the national Royal Bank Cup.
Roger Aldag is a former Canadian football offensive lineman who played for the Saskatchewan Roughriders from 1976 through 1992. He was part of the Grey Cup championship-winning Saskatchewan Roughriders in 1989. Aldag currently holds the Roughrider record for games played with 271 regular season games and 5 play-off games.
Randolph "Randy" Lee Ragan is a former Canadian elite professional soccer player, who was considered one of the top midfield players in Canada in the 1980s.
Neil Ellett was a Canadian soccer player who spent his career with Vancouver teams, including the Vancouver Whitecaps of the North American Soccer League. He also played for the member of the Canadian national and Olympic soccer teams.
The Vancouver Whitecaps Football Club, also known as Vancouver Whitecaps FC or simply Vancouver Whitecaps, is a Canadian professional soccer team based in Vancouver. The Whitecaps FC compete in Major League Soccer (MLS) as a member club of the league's Western Conference. The club was established on March 18, 2009, and began play in 2011 as an MLS expansion team. The Whitecaps FC were the 17th team to enter Major League Soccer and replaced the USSF Division 2 team of the same name in the city. The club has been owned and managed by the same group since their USSF days, having graduated to MLS after the conclusion of the USSF's 2010 season. The MLS version of the team is a phoenix club, and the third to carry the legacy of the Whitecaps name. In the 2012 season, the team became the first Canadian team to qualify for the MLS Cup Playoffs.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup will be the 23rd FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial international men's soccer championship contested by the national teams of the member associations of FIFA. The tournament will be jointly hosted by 16 cities in three North American countries; 60 matches, including the quarterfinals, semi-finals, and the final, will be hosted by the United States while neighboring Canada and Mexico will each host 10 matches. The tournament will be the first hosted by three nations. This tournament will be the first to include 48 teams, expanded from 32.
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