Introduction

Welcome to First Line Rover, a blog dedicated to bring a modern twist on telling the story of the NHL from it’s very beginning to it’s present day.

The goal of this blog is to share the history of the NHL by using a modern blog style. We’ll be using tools everyone loves these days, such as power rankings, trade grades and hot takes. These weren’t necessarily around back in the day, but it may help you, the readers, learn more about pro hockey’s past and how today’s game was shaped.

You may be asking what the name of the blog means. Rover was a position common in the early days of hockey. The most famous rovers in history include the likes of Fred ‘Cyclone’ Taylor and Hobey Baker. A rover would basically be a sixth skater on the ice, roaming freely and helping out wherever necessary. The position was phased out by the NHA (the precursor to the NHL) in the early 1910’s and was gone from hockey by 1923.

So what we’ll be doing is taking a walk through history together once a week, covering one month of NHL history at a time. We’ll be visiting each team briefly, and covering any major moves or big games. You probably will see a bunch of names you won’t recognize, and that’s OK. This is how we learn who’s who.

We will be putting ourselves in the position of a fan at the time who doesn’t know the future. This way, we can get a much better picture of what our counterparts from back then were thinking at the time.

So why should you read this blog weekly? For one reason, it’d make the writer really happy. Readers are great. Having a community here to discuss these kind of things is the goal, and our readers provide the bulk of that.

Aside from that, this is a great place to learn about hockey’s history and how the game became what it is today. You get to meet all sorts of crazy characters, learn some great stories, and have some fun along the way debating who’s the best, or who’s the worst, or whether that guy shouldn’t have done that thing he did.

The material you’ll see here is carefully researched and crafted to meet the demands of current hockey fans both casual and die-hard. It’ll be written by someone who knows the game, the players, the fans, and everything in between, and how to tell a story.

So come back every week for another month of hockey history. You never know what you’ll learn, unless you spoil the party for yourself by looking at hockey-reference.com. That’s entirely up to you.