Pre-Game Skate -- Evolution -- The Puck

The Puck

The beauty of the sport as it began to emerge across Canada was its simplicity. All that was needed was ice, which was abundantly available, a stick and, of course, a puck.

Before we arrived at today's vulcanized rubber puck, hockey games were played with many different objects ranging from India rubber balls to frozen fruit and manure to wooden pucks. The first documented use of a flat disc known as a puck was in Montreal on March 3rd, 1875. By the turn of the century, the puck had arrived. There would be no innovations on the design of the puck until 1996 when the new "FoxTrax" puck was introduced. Fox Television, who, at the time had the NHL television contract, designed the new puck based on the notion that television viewers had difficulty following the puck on broadcasts. The "FoxTrax" puck had a tracking device inside it, and when shown on television, it appeared to glow. Depending on the speed it was travelling at, it also featured a coloured comet trail. The hockey-viewing public did not embrace this new technology and the "FoxTrax" puck, after a much-ridiculed trial, was dropped following the playoffs.

For the first indoor game the "puck" was an Indian rubber ball like that used in lacrosse matches. The owners of the Victoria Rink were required to spend $300 to replace all of the broken windows caused by the constant bouncing of the erratic ball. Legend has it that for the next game hosted there, the owner cut the rounded edges off of the ball to reduce the bounce and inadvertently invented the hockey puck.