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What is the NHL?

NHL stands for the National Hockey League and is almost universally considered to be the highest level of professional ice hockey in the world.

The NHL currently has 30 member clubs, or teams, 23 of which are located in the United States and 7 in Canada.

The league is divided into two conferences of equal size – the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference. Each year the 30 NHL teams compete for the Stanley Cup, now emblematic of the championship of the NHL, with the Eastern Conference Champion playing the Western Conference Champion in a best-of-seven playoff series known as the Stanley Cup Finals. The Stanley Cup was first awarded in 1893 and was initially intended to honor the best amateur hockey team in Canada.

The NHL was initially formed in 1917 as a four team league (Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal Canadiens and Montreal Wanderers) and was borne from the ashes of a predecessor league known as the NHA – the National Hockey Association. The NHL lost the Wanderers midway through its first season, and the number of member clubs has varied through the years from three to the present 30. From the NHL’s founding in 1917 until 1926, the NHL Champion played a western Canadian/US professional league champion for the Stanley Cup, but with the demise of the western professional leagues, the Stanley Cup became emblematic of the championship of the NHL beginning in 1926-27 and remains so to this day.

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