Western Hockey League (professional)

The Western Canada Hockey League (WCHL), founded in 1921, was a major professional ice hockey league originally based in the prairies of Canada. It was renamed the Western Hockey League (WHL) in 1925 and disbanded in 1926.

The Stanley Cup was donated in 1893 to serve as a trophy to be awarded to the national champion of Canadian amateur ice hockey. The trophy eventually became open to professional teams in 1906 and a new trophy, the Allan Cup was donated to serve as the national amateur trophy. By this time, the Canadian Prairies were being rapidly settled and in 1914 a team based in Saskatchewan (the Regina Victorias) would capture the Allan Cup for the first time. By this time, competition for the Stanley Cup, had evolved into a World Series-inspired "East vs. West" affair to be contested between the winners of the two professional hockey leagues then in business, the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA), based in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon and the National Hockey Association (NHA), based in Ontario and Quebec. Although the PCHA won two of the first three Stanley Cup series contested under this format, the National Hockey League (NHL) came to dominate Stanley Cup play after it replaced the NHA as the premier Eastern competition in 1917.

In 1921, the Edmonton Eskimos and Calgary Tigers of the Big Four League saw their league collapse on allegations of pay for amateurs. Together with the Regina Capitals and Saskatoon Sheiks the teams organized the openly professional Western Canada Hockey League (WCHL). The league was organized under the presidency of E. L. Richardson of Calgary, with Wesley Champ of Regina, Robert Pinder of Saskatoon, K. C. MacKenzie of Edmonton, and J. Lloyd Turner of Calgary, becoming the directors. The league, like the National Hockey League (NHL), played six-man hockey, without the old 'rover' position. At the time, there was not yet a clear distinction between "major" and "minor" professional leagues in any North American sport other than baseball and the new league was recognized as a comparable league to the existing Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA). The winner of a series between the champions of the two leagues would go on to face the winner of the NHL for the coveted Stanley Cup.

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