Nhl

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For those who say there is no heat on ice, now is the right time to prove them wrong.

Currently, the National Hockey League (NHL) is among the major professional sports leagues in the United States, the others being the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Football League (NFL), and the Major League Baseball (MLB).

In the year 1917, NHL was founded in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The first establishing teams were the Canadiens, the Senators, the Bulldogs, and the Wanderers. The league first started with four teams which later expanded to 30 (24 franchisees from the United States and 6 from Canada).

Although hockey is extremely popular, the NHL has a small fan base. Sponsors pay limited notice of the league that television was not really that much of an income for it either. Usually, the league's audience is composed mostly by people who are educated and affluent since few can afford to buy the expensive game tickets.

In terms of teams and players, among the four famous professional leagues in the United States, the NHL has the most Canadian teams in it. While the other three only has one Canadian team based in Toronto each, the NHL has about six in the league. The league also takes pride in being the only league to have teams based in the capital cities of two countries, namely, Washington D.C. and Ottawa.

As for its games, the NHL teams are currently divided into two conferences that are regularly rotated every year, namely, the Eastern and Western Conferences. Every conference has three different divisions. For the Eastern Conference, there is the Atlantic, the Northeast, and the Southeast divisions. The Central, Northwest, and Pacific Divisions, on the other hand, make up the Western Conference.

During regular seasons, each NHL team plays 82 games. Thirty two games of the said 82 are played within the team’s division, while 40 other games are competed in the non-divisional intra-conference. The remaining 10 games are participated in the inter-conference. But even with so many games at hand, the league's season ticket prices still remain high, traditionally higher than the other three major leagues.

Despite having a limited fan base compared to other major leagues, the NHL is still able to maintain its existence and popularity in the sports scene with its players’ reputations. Some of the NHL’s notable players are Sidney Crosby, Dany Heatley, Vincent Lecavalier, Martin St. Lois, and Joe Thorton. The five players are the highest point-scoring forwards in the league's 2006-2007 season.

The NHL's walk towards its position now was not that easy. It may have gained a lot of teams, but it also lost some on its way towards where it is now. But even so, the truth remains that the NHL boosted the reputation of ice sports in the U.S. and Canada while instigating more interest for hockey.

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