Olympic ice hockey got its start 106 years ago

The NHL returns to the world’s grandest multisport stage this month for the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026.

Thirty-two teams, each with at least one NHL player on the roster, will compete for Olympic gold Feb. 11-22, the event to look nothing like it did more than a century ago.

It’s been 106 years since “ice hockey,” so called to differentiate it from the game that’s played on grass, made its Olympic debut, the Winnipeg Falcons winning the historic first gold medal at Antwerp, Belgium in 1920, representing Canada.

Seven nations of amateur players curiously skated in Belgium under the umbrella of the Summer Olympics in the Games of the VIIth Olympiade.

Four years later, the sport would be featured in Chamonix, France, in the first Olympic Winter Games. But in 1920, with little fanfare and before the opening ceremony in Antwerp, the puck was dropped on a Belgian rink for a tournament that pleased and also puzzled its spectators.

A team photo of the 1920 Winnipeg Falcons and a view of a gold medal awarded to the players for their historic Olympic championship.

Until then, the International Olympic Committee had balked at even considering ice hockey for its program, citing insufficient European participation as their reason.

But in 1920, the IOC rounded up the commitment of host Belgium, France, Switzerland, Sweden and fledgling Czechoslovakia. Germany and Austria were among a handful of countries shut out of Antwerp as a receipt for their participation in World War I.

Indeed, this was the first Olympics held following the Great War, the 1916 Games scheduled for Berlin having been cancelled. War-ravaged Belgium was a symbolic choice to host the 1920 Games, the IOC sending a message that the world was getting back on its feet and that the strong-willed, rebuilding host nation reflected the Olympic ideals set down two decades earlier by French Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Games.

This would be the first Olympics at which the flag with five interlocking rings was raised, and at which the Olympic Oath was spoken.

So, it was on this historic Antwerp stage that ice hockey would take its maiden bow in the Olympics, the 1920 tournament doubling as the sport’s first official world championship.

With figure skating, it essentially was packaged inside the Summer Games, competition held April 23-29 to precede the summer disciplines which ran from April 23 to Sept. 12.

In his 2009 book, “Canada’s Olympic Hockey History: 1920-2010,” author Andrew Podnieks points out another reason why ice hockey was granted 1920 entry into the IOC’s private club: managers of Antwerp’s Le Palais de Glace insisted that the sport be included on the program if genteel figure skating was to use the rink.

Konrad Johannesson’s Winnipeg Falcons sweater with his VIIth Olympiade armband, and a trophy given to team members by William Hewitt, a Canadian Olympic official and secretary of the Falcons for the tournament. At the base of the trophy is a 1920 Olympic gold medal.

The political wrangling took seemingly forever, five European participants as well as Canada and the United States not learning until two months before the Games that ice hockey would be on the program.

And it surely wouldn’t be Olympic hockey of a variety that’s enjoyed today, the sport having evolved from its earliest, lopsided days to ultimately include the fiercely competitive participation of NHL talent and the world’s finest women players.

Canada would select a club team to represent the country in Belgium. The Winnipeg Falcons had just won the Allan Cup, a title emblematic of amateur-team superiority in Canada, by whipping the Fort William Maple Leafs, 9-1 and 7-2, in the semifinal round, then beating the University of Toronto varsity team, 8-3 and 3-2, in a two-game, total-goals championship final.

Konrad Johannesson, John Davidson and Frank Fredrickson as members of the Canadian Army’s 223rd Overseas Battalion in 1916. Johannesson and Fredrickson were later members of Canada's gold medal-winning hockey team at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp; a newspaper report of the Falcons’ championship victory.

The weeklong ocean journey from Saint John, New Brunswick, to Liverpool, England would cost about $10,000, paid for by Allan Cup receipts and donations from the government of Manitoba and the city of Winnipeg.

It was an uneventful crossing of the Atlantic aboard the S.S. Melita for Canada’s eight-man team, seven of the players of Icelandic extraction, six of whom were returning to Europe after having fought in the war.

The trip’s only mishap, Podnieks wrote, was team captain Frank Fredrickson tumbling out of his bunk and banging his head.

“The ship’s carpenter,” he wrote, “carved two dozen sticks from ‘rough’ wood the team had obtained in Montreal; these were the only sticks the Falcons would be using in the Olympics.”

A second travel leg then took the team from Dover to Ostend, Belgium, for the Games.

Winnipeg Falcons captain Frank Frederickson and a newspaper report announcing the Falcons’ departure for the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium.

Canada was considered the huge favorite in a format that saw six players and a free-ranging rover play two 20-minute halves, substitutions not permitted. An injury would require the opponent to remove a player to keep the sides even, at least in number.

Teams played the “Bergvall” system, a unique elimination format used in the 1912, 1920 and 1924 Summer Olympics. In Antwerp, it was used in ice hockey, soccer and tug-of-war.

First-round ice hockey winners competed for the gold medal, won by Canada. Losers to the champion played another sudden-death series for the silver, with those losing to the team winning silver, the U.S., then playing for bronze. The six-a-side teams played two 20-minute halves, these so-called “Canadian rules” written by highly respected Canadian Olympic official and hockey pioneer William Hewitt, the father of future hockey broadcast legend Foster Hewitt.

Matches were played on a surface that was roughly 170 feet long by 65 feet wide, appearing smaller with seven players per side, with well-heeled spectators eating and drinking extravagantly at rink-side while an orchestra played throughout.

Canada wasn’t exactly challenged in this first tournament, crushing Czechoslovakia, 15-0, in their first game. The United States, an all-star team assembled for the event, was a much tougher test in the Falcons’ second game, but they, too, came up on the short end of a 2-0 score.

From the April 27, 1920 Montreal Daily Star, reporting on the Winnipeg Falcons’ Olympic gold and world championship victory.

Canada then clobbered Sweden, 12-1, in the gold medal final, the U.S. beating Sweden, 7-0, and Czechoslovakia, 16-0, in the silver medal tournament to finish second, the Czechs winning the bronze with a 1-0 victory against Sweden.

Fredrickson, none the worse for wear after his steamship tumble, would score 12 goals in three games on his way to Hockey Hall of Fame induction in 1958. Haldor “Slim” Halderson scored nine, while goalie Wally Byron was beaten just once and apparently was aghast to have surrendered that one, reported to have been “a gift” to the Swedes.

The triumphant Canadians were feted generously following their victory, bouncing from one banquet to the next, guests of honor of military and government leaders. The respect shown them in Belgium was remarkable; their ship alone was allowed to leave from Havre’s strike-locked port for their 11-day transatlantic return.

Homecoming receptions were stunning in scope, the Falcons celebrated in Montreal and Toronto before Winnipeg rolled out a red carpet that seemingly stretched all of city limits for their conquering heroes.

The 1928-29 Boston Bruins, which included 1920 Olympic champion Frank Frederickson. Bottom row, from left: Tiny Thompson, Frederickson, Eddie Shore, Lionel Hitchman, Cy Denneny, Norm Gainor, Hal Winkler. Back row, from left: Cooney Weiland, Harry Oliver, Gord Pettinger, Dit Clapper, Lloyd Klein, Percy Galbraith, Eddie Rodden, Red Green.

Three members of Canada’s championship team would go on to see NHL action:

• Frederickson: 161 games between 1926-31 for the Detroit Cougars, Boston Bruins, Pittsburgh Pirates and Detroit Falcons. He won the Stanley Cup with Victoria of the Western Hockey League in 1924-25, the last non-NHL team to win the trophy.
• Halderson: 44 games in 1926-27 with Detroit and the Toronto St. Patricks, a teammate of Frederickson for the 1925 Cup win.
• Bobby Benson: eight games in 1924-25 with Boston.

Canadian teams would be crowned Winter Olympic hockey champion again in 1924, 1928 and 1932 before being stunned for the gold by Great Britain at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany in 1936.

A Winnipeg Falcons 1920 Olympic and world championship pennant and a game-worn Toronto Maple Leafs sweater, displayed at Canada’s Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec in March 2017.

The nation would bounce back to win gold in 1942 and 1952 --- the 1940 Games were cancelled by World War II -- before enduring a 50-year drought – 12 Olympics -- until its return to the gold medal podium at Salt Lake City in 2002, two more gold medals to come in 2010 in Vancouver and 2014 in Sochi, Russia.

All except 1920’s historic curtain-raising tournament have been played under the Olympic Winter Games banner, as will every one in the future.

In Milano Cortina this month, Canada aims for a natural hat trick at Olympics involving NHL players, victories in 2010 and 2014 having set the table for another best-on-best tournament to be played in a megawatt global spotlight.

Four players from the Winnipeg Jets will fly the city’s flag, representing three nations a century-plus after the Falcons made history nearly 600 miles north in Antwerp: defenseman Josh Morrissey for Canada, goalie Connor Hellebuyck and forward Kyle Connor for the U.S. and forward Nino Niederreiter for Switzerland.

In spirit, at least, the 1920 Falcons have lived to see the Olympic Winter Games again.

Top photo: The 1920 Olympic-champion Winnipeg Falcons, representing Canada at the VIIth Olympiade in Antwerp, Belgium. From left: Gordon Sigurjonsson, coach; Herb Axford, club president; Wally Byron, goalie; Haldor “Slim” Halderson, right wing; Frank Frederickson, centre and captain; William Hewitt, Canadian Olympic representative and team secretary; Konrad Johannesson, right defense; Mike Goodman, left wing; Allan “Huck” Woodman, substitute; Bobby Benson, left defense; Chris Fridfinnson, rover; Bill Fridfinnson, official.