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Why is Kingston, Ontario, thought by many to be the birthplace of hockey?

The first recorded games of shinny on ice were played in Kingston, Upper Canada, in 1839. A British Army officer, Arthur Freeling, said he and fellow soldiers played “hockey on the ice” in January 1843 in Kingston. Edward Horsey, in his diary, noted that shinny was played on the ice of Kingston’s harbour in the 1860s by soldiers. However, an organized game with some rules wasn’t played in Kingston until 1886. That match pitted Queen’s College students against Royal Military College cadets and occurred 11 years after the first recorded indoor game in Montreal.

What is the Frozen Four?

Since 1948 the U.S. National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has crowned the Men’s Division I champion in American college hockey. Today, through an extremely complex system, college teams across the country are winnowed down to 12 clubs that play one another in the annual NCAA Tournament. The quartet of semi-finalists that comes out on top is called the Frozen Four (so-called to differentiate it from basketball’s Final Four), and from the playoffs in this group the year’s best college team is determined. The Frozen Four playoffs are held in a different city each year, usually one associated with college hockey (such as Detroit, St. Paul, Minnesota, or Albany, New York), but not always. In 2008 the Boston College Eagles were crowned Men’s Division I champions after defeating the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame 4–1 in Denver, Colorado. The NCAA started a Women’s Frozen Four in 2001. The women’s champion in 2008 was the University of Minnesota at Duluth.