"NHL" redirects here. For added uses, see NHL (disambiguation).
The National Hockey Accordance (French:Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH), about abbreviated to the NHL, is an unincorporated not-for-profit amalgamation which operates a aloft able ice hockey accordance of 30 franchised associate clubs, of which 6 are amidst in Canada and 24 in the United States.[1] Headquartered in New York City, the NHL is broadly brash to be the able able ice hockey accordance in the world,[2] and one of the aloft able sports leagues of the United States and Canada. The Stanley Cup, the oldest able sports approval in North America,[3] is awarded annually to the accordance playoff best at the end of ceremony season.
The accordance was organized on November 22, 1917 in Montreal, Canada afterwards the cessation of operations of its anterior organization, the National Hockey Amalgamation (NHA), which had been founded in 1909.[4] It started with four teams and, through a alternation of expansions, contractions, and relocations, the accordance is now composed of 30 animate franchises. Afterwards a "lockout" that led to the abandoning of the complete 2004–05 season, the accordance resumed play below a new accumulated acceding acceding that included a bacon cap. In 2009, the NHL enjoyed annual highs in acceding of sponsorships, crowds and television audiences.[5]
The NHL draws abounding abominable able players from all over the angel and currently has players from about 20 acclimatized countries.[6] Although Canadians access historically constituted the majority of the players in the NHL, over the able four added decades the percentages of American and European able players access added both because of the NHL's affiliated addition from six to thirty clubs ashamed 1967, and the added availability of abominable able European players, abnormally from aloft Eastern Bloc countries.[7]