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Did you know …

that the first Czech-born player in the National Hockey League was one of the league’s greatest stars? Stan Mikita, born Stanislaus Gvoth in Sokolce, Czechoslovakia, in 1940, came to Canada at the age of eight and settled in St. Catharines, Ontario. During his long NHL career from 1958–59 to 1979–80 with the Chicago Black Hawks, he racked up 1,467 regular-season points with 541 goals and 926 assists.

Which country won the first World Hockey Championship?

The answer to this question is a bit complicated. Prior to 1920, European Hockey Championships were held without North American participation, with the first European competition being held in Les Avants, Switzerland, in 1910. Great Britain won that event. In 1920 North Americans competed in international hockey for the first time at the Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium. Canada, the winner of the gold medal there, was also deemed the World Champion, as was the case in the first two Winter Olympics in 1924 and 1928. The first World Championship sanctioned outside the Olympics by the International Ice Hockey Federation took place in Chamonix, France, Berlin, and Vienna in 1930, with Canada as the gold medallist. Until 1972, the first time the World Championship and the Olympic hockey tournament were played separately in the same year, Olympic and World Championship medals were handed out for the same results. In the Olympic years of 1980, 1984, and 1988 there were no World Championships played. Beginning in 1992, the Olympic hockey competition and the World Championship were once more held as separate events in an Olympic year. So the answer to the question of who won the first World Championship would be Canada, whether one uses 1920 as the first year or 1930.