Original Six NHL Teams: The Clubs, the Era and the Myth
The Original Six are the Canadiens, Maple Leafs, Bruins, Blackhawks, Red Wings and Rangers, the NHL's only clubs from 1942 to 1967, four of them in the U.S.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished NHL History & Records22 min read
- Era began
- 1942-43
- Era ended
- 1966-67
- Seasons with six clubs
- 25
- Clubs based in the U.S.
- 4
On May 2, 1967, the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Montreal Canadiens 3-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens to win the Stanley Cup in six games. Nobody in the building called it the end of the Original Six era, because nobody yet used the phrase. A month later six new clubs were stocking their rosters in an expansion draft, and a league that had been the same six teams for a quarter of a century was about to double.
The Original Six NHL teams are the Montreal Canadiens, the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Boston Bruins, the Chicago Blackhawks, the Detroit Red Wings and the New York Rangers. For 25 seasons, from 1942-43 through 1966-67, they were the entire National Hockey League. Four are American clubs and two are Canadian. The name is misleading in one important way: they were not the league's original members. The NHL began in 1917 with four clubs in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, and only the Canadiens and the Toronto franchise were there at the start. "Original" refers to the clubs that existed before the 1967 expansion, not to the league's founding.
Who the Original Six NHL teams are
The six clubs share history and rivalries, but they arrived at different times, under different owners and with different names.
| Club | City | First NHL season | Arena through the era | Cups, 1942-43 to 1966-67 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Montreal Canadiens | Montreal | 1917-18 | Montreal Forum | 10 |
| Toronto Maple Leafs | Toronto | 1917-18 | Maple Leaf Gardens | 9 |
| Detroit Red Wings | Detroit | 1926-27 | Olympia Stadium | 5 |
| Chicago Black Hawks | Chicago | 1926-27 | Chicago Stadium | 1 |
| Boston Bruins | Boston | 1924-25 | Boston Garden | 0 |
| New York Rangers | New York | 1926-27 | Madison Square Garden | 0 |
Two notes on names. Chicago's club was the Black Hawks, two words, until 1986, when it adopted the single-word Blackhawks, the form found on its original 1926 founding documents. Detroit's club played as the Cougars and then the Falcons before taking the name Red Wings in 1932. And Toronto's franchise played its first seasons without the Maple Leafs name at all.
The four American clubs, in Boston, Chicago, Detroit and New York, gave the NHL its U.S. base for 25 years. For most of the era, the league's money was in American arenas and its talent pipeline was in Canada, a split that shaped almost everything about how the clubs operated.
Where they sit now
Under the alignment in place for the 2025-26 season, five of the six play in the Eastern Conference. Boston, Detroit, Montreal and Toronto are in the Atlantic Division together, which keeps several of the old rivalries in regular divisional play. The Rangers are in the Metropolitan Division. Chicago is the outlier, alone in the Western Conference's Central Division since Detroit moved east in 2013.
Why "Original Six" misleads
The National Hockey League was formed in November 1917 at a meeting in Montreal, as a way for the owners of the National Hockey Association to reorganize without one difficult partner. Four clubs played in the first season: the Montreal Canadiens, the Montreal Wanderers, the Ottawa Senators and a Toronto club operated by the company that ran the city's arena.
The Wanderers lasted a handful of games. Their building, the Montreal Arena, burned in January 1918, and the club withdrew. Ottawa was one of the strongest teams in the league's first decade and won the Stanley Cup four times in the 1920s, then moved to St. Louis and folded in the 1930s.
So of the first four, only two survived to become part of the Original Six. The other four "original" clubs, Boston, Chicago, Detroit and the Rangers, joined between 1924 and 1926, years after the league began.
What the phrase actually means
The term describes the clubs that made up the league in the stable period between the Second World War and expansion. It is about continuity rather than founding. A fan from the 1950s could name every team in the league, and every team played every other team many times a season. Those 25 years produced a closed world of six clubs that became the template many fans still think of as the NHL at its purest.
There is an honest case that the phrase flatters the six. The clubs were not the best teams of the league's early decades in all cases, and the stability of their era came from economic contraction, not design. That does not make it a bad name. It means the word "original" carries more weight than its facts.
When each of the six arrived
The order matters, because each club arrived under different conditions.
Montreal, 1909. The Canadiens were founded in December 1909 as a member of the National Hockey Association, the forerunner of the NHL. They were created partly to give French-speaking Montreal a team of its own, and they won their first Stanley Cup in 1916, still in the NHA. When the NHL formed in 1917 the Canadiens were a founding member. They are the oldest club in the league and the oldest continuously operating professional hockey club anywhere.
Toronto, 1917. The Toronto franchise began life in the NHL's first season, run by the company that operated the Arena Gardens. Recorded in the NHL's books as the Arenas for its first two seasons, though the name was not formally adopted until the second, it won the Stanley Cup in 1918, became the St. Patricks in 1919 and won the Cup again in 1922. In 1927 a group led by Conn Smythe bought the club and renamed it the Maple Leafs.
Boston, 1924. The Bruins were the NHL's first club in the United States, founded by Charles Adams, a grocery businessman. They joined in the same season as the Montreal Maroons, an English-speaking Montreal club that the league added to compete with the Canadiens.
Chicago, Detroit and New York, 1926. These three arrived together in the league's biggest expansion of the 1920s. The Rangers were created by Madison Square Garden, which already hosted the New York Americans and wanted a club of its own. Chicago's club was owned by Frederic McLaughlin. Detroit's club was stocked largely with players from the Victoria Cougars of the Western Hockey League, which had folded, and it took the Cougars name at first.
Number of clubs playing in each listed season. The league peaked at ten clubs in the late 1920s and fell to six by 1942-43, where it stayed until expansion in 1967-68.
Show the numbers
| Item | Clubs |
|---|---|
| 1917-18 | 4 |
| 1924-25 | 6 |
| 1926-27 | 10 |
| 1938-39 | 7 |
| 1942-43 | 6 |
| 1966-67 | 6 |
| 1967-68 | 12 |
How ten clubs became six
By the 1926-27 season the NHL had ten clubs. Within sixteen years, four were gone. The Depression did most of the damage, and the Second World War finished it.
The Pittsburgh Pirates, who joined in 1925, could not draw crowds as the economy collapsed. They moved to Philadelphia as the Quakers for 1930-31 and lost so heavily on the ice and at the gate that they suspended operations after one season.
The original Ottawa Senators, one of the founders, were in a small market and struggled financially even before the Depression. They sat out 1931-32, returned, and then moved to St. Louis as the Eagles for 1934-35. The Eagles lasted one season.
The Montreal Maroons won Stanley Cups in 1926 and 1935 but could not survive in a city that also supported the Canadiens. They suspended operations in 1938.
The New York Americans, the Garden's original tenants, struggled under a string of owners and financial problems. They renamed themselves the Brooklyn Americans for the 1941-42 season, though they still played at Madison Square Garden, and then suspended operations in 1942 as players left for military service. The club never returned.
| Departed club | NHL seasons | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Montreal Wanderers | 1917-18 | Withdrew after their arena burned in January 1918 |
| Hamilton Tigers | 1920-21 to 1924-25 | Franchise ended after a players' dispute in 1925; its players went to the New York Americans |
| Pittsburgh Pirates | 1925-26 to 1929-30 | Moved to Philadelphia as the Quakers for 1930-31, then suspended |
| Ottawa Senators | 1917-18 to 1933-34 | Moved to St. Louis as the Eagles for 1934-35, then folded |
| Montreal Maroons | 1924-25 to 1937-38 | Suspended operations in 1938 |
| New York and Brooklyn Americans | 1925-26 to 1941-42 | Suspended operations in 1942 and did not return |
The suspensions were meant to be temporary in some cases. The NHL kept the Americans' franchise technically alive for several years after 1942, and the club's owners expected to return after the war. They did not, and by the late 1940s the league had settled at six. The decision not to expand again for decades was deliberate: the six owners preferred a small league in which they all made money.
How the league worked for 25 years
The schedule grew as the era went on. In 1942-43, the first season with six clubs, each team played 50 games. The schedule went to 60 games in 1946-47 and to 70 games in 1949-50, which meant each club played every other club 14 times, seven at home and seven away. It stayed at 70 until the expansion in 1967. A fan of the era saw the same five opponents over and over, and the familiarity bred the rivalries the league still sells. The way the schedule has grown since then, to 82 games and more, is covered in our guide to how many games are in an NHL season.
The playoff format was simple. Four of the six clubs qualified. The first-place team met the third-place team and the second met the fourth, each in a best-of-seven semifinal. The winners played a best-of-seven Stanley Cup Final. Two rounds, at most fourteen games, for the Cup.
Games each club played in the listed seasons. The 70-game schedule from 1949-50 meant 14 meetings with each of the other five clubs.
Show the numbers
| Item | Games per club |
|---|---|
| 1942-43 | 50 |
| 1945-46 | 50 |
| 1946-47 | 60 |
| 1949-50 | 70 |
| 1966-67 | 70 |
Scarce jobs and the stars they made
Six clubs meant very few jobs. A player good enough for the NHL in most later eras might spend his whole career in the American Hockey League or a western minor league in this one, because there were simply not enough roster spots. Clubs held surplus talent in their own farm systems as insurance, and a veteran who complained about his salary could be sent down and replaced by someone younger and cheaper.
The upside, for anyone watching, was concentration. The best players in the world were packed into six lineups. Maurice Richard scored 50 goals in 50 games for Montreal in 1944-45, a mark that became the standard every scorer was measured against for decades. Gordie Howe arrived in Detroit in 1946 and played through the entire era and well beyond it. Jacques Plante changed his position on November 1, 1959, at Madison Square Garden, when he returned to the ice after a cut to the face wearing a mask and kept wearing it. Bobby Hull became the first player to score more than 50 goals in a season when he reached 54 in 1965-66.
Each of those players faced the same five opponents fourteen times a year. Rivalries were personal in a way they cannot be in a 32-team league, because the same defensemen chased the same forwards for a decade. Grudges carried over from November to March and into the playoffs. That is a large part of why the era is remembered as intense rather than merely small.
What that format rewarded
With four of six teams qualifying, the regular season decided who stayed home, but not much more. Two clubs missed the playoffs each season, and a strong club could have a bad stretch and still make it. That put enormous weight on the playoffs, and it meant the strongest franchises could build dynasties without facing much variety in opposition. A club that beat the same four rivals every spring could win year after year.
The comparison with today's format, in which 16 of 32 clubs qualify and must win four rounds, is stark. Our explainer on the NHL playoff format sets out how it works now.
Who won the Cup in the Original Six era
Twenty-five Stanley Cups were awarded between 1943 and 1967. They went to only four clubs, and three clubs won all but one.
Montreal won ten, including five in a row from 1956 to 1960, a record that still stands. Toronto won nine, including three straight from 1947 to 1949 and three more from 1962 to 1964, and then the last Cup of the era in 1967. Detroit won five, four of them between 1950 and 1955. Chicago won one, in 1961, led by Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita. Boston and the Rangers won none.
Why the wealth stayed where it was
The concentration was not luck. Montreal, Toronto and Detroit had the most extensive systems for finding and controlling young players, and they used those systems to keep their rosters stocked. Boston and the Rangers had shorter supply chains and poorer luck in developing players, and the Rangers in particular spent much of the era near the bottom of the standings. Chicago was often weak until the late 1950s, when Hull and Mikita came through its system and the club built the team that won in 1961.
The Rangers' long wait became famous. After winning in 1940, the club did not win again until 1994, a 54-year gap. Boston's drought was shorter: 29 years from 1941 to 1970, when Bobby Orr and a team built after expansion ended it. For how each club's total has grown since, see our guide to Stanley Cup wins by team.
How players were tied to clubs before a real draft
There was no universal amateur draft for most of the era. The first NHL Amateur Draft was held in 1963, and it applied only to players not already tied to a club, which in practice left little for it to distribute. The draft as fans know it today, covered in our explainer on how the NHL draft works, took over fully only at the end of the 1960s.
Instead, clubs controlled players through a chain of arrangements that started when a boy was in his teens.
The base was sponsorship. Each NHL club sponsored junior teams, and in some cases entire amateur leagues, across Canada. A sponsored club's players were tied to the NHL sponsor. Toronto's network included the St. Michael's Majors and the Toronto Marlboros; Montreal's included the Junior Canadiens. A talented 14- or 15-year-old in a sponsored town was, in effect, already the property of an NHL club.
The paperwork was a set of forms. A player could sign a form that gave the NHL club the right to his professional services if he turned pro. The best-known, the C-form, bound a player to the club that held it. Signed young enough, a player could be controlled for his entire career.
- Sponsored junior teamAn NHL club funds a junior or amateur team, and its players fall within the club's orbit.
- Signed formThe player, often in his mid-teens, signs a form giving the NHL club rights to him as a professional.
- Reserve listOnce he turns pro, the club places him on its reserve list, which every other club must honor.
- Minor-league assignmentThe club sends him to a minor-league affiliate it controls until it needs him.
- NHL rosterHe reaches the NHL with the club that has held his rights since he was a boy.
The general chain of control used by the six clubs in the 1940s and 1950s. Forms, ages and terms varied by club and over time.
Territorial claims and the reserve list
Montreal had an additional advantage. For long stretches the league allowed the Canadiens a priority claim on a limited number of French-Canadian players, on the reasoning that a club in French-speaking Quebec should have the chance to sign them, and the club's reach into Quebec's junior and senior hockey brought it players such as Jean Béliveau and Bernard Geoffrion. How far the formal claim reached in any given year is murkier than the folklore suggests; the network of sponsored clubs did most of the work.
Once a player was a professional, he was on his club's reserve list, which bound him to that club for as long as it wished to keep him. A player could not negotiate with another team. His choices were to play for his club at the salary it offered or not to play in the NHL at all. The reserve system was the main reason player salaries stayed low for so long and the main grievance of the players who tried to form an association in 1957, an effort the owners fought hard. The NHL Players' Association was finally formed in 1967.
The system kept the strong franchises strong. A club with a large sponsorship network had more prospects; more prospects meant more NHL players; more NHL players meant more wins, more revenue and more sponsorship. It was not designed to produce competitive balance, and it did not.
One family, three buildings: the Norris interests
The economics of the era had another quirk. A single family, the Norrises, had a financial stake in half the league.
James E. Norris, a grain businessman, bought the Detroit franchise in 1932 and renamed it the Red Wings. He also owned the Olympia, Detroit's arena. Over the next two decades, the Norris interests acquired a controlling position in Chicago Stadium and, with the businessman Arthur Wirtz, effectively controlled the Black Hawks. The family also held a large stake in the Madison Square Garden corporation, which owned the Rangers.
Critics called the NHL the "Norris House League." The phrase captured a real concern: with one family holding interests in Detroit, Chicago and New York, the other three clubs could find themselves outvoted on league business, and the league's competitive balance was entangled with the family's financial interests.
What it did to competition
The specific effects are debated, and there is little hard evidence of rigged games or transactions. What is documented is that several of the clubs in which the Norris interests held stakes were weak for long stretches of the era, particularly Chicago before the late 1950s and the Rangers for much of it. Arena owners made money from boxing, ice shows and other events as well as hockey, and a hockey club was not always the main priority.
The concentration broke up after the 1960s as the family's holdings were divided and as expansion changed the league's economics. It remains a reminder that the Original Six era was not a golden age of free competition. It was a cartel of six, and some of the six were more equal than others.
The arenas of the Original Six era
The six buildings were as much a part of the era as the teams. All six are gone as NHL venues.
The Montreal Forum opened in 1924 and became the Canadiens' permanent home in 1926. It was rebuilt and expanded in 1968. The Canadiens played their last game there in March 1996 and moved to a new arena downtown. The building still stands and has been converted into an entertainment complex.
Maple Leaf Gardens was built in 1931 under Conn Smythe's direction during the Depression. The Leafs left in February 1999 for a new arena. The Gardens was converted, keeping its exterior, into a grocery store and an athletic center for a Toronto university.
Boston Garden opened in 1928 above North Station. Its rink was smaller than standard, which suited a physical team. The Bruins left in 1995 for a new arena built next door, and the old Garden was demolished in 1998.
Chicago Stadium opened in 1929 and was famous for its noise and its pipe organ. The Black Hawks played there until 1994, then moved across the street to the United Center. The Stadium was demolished in 1995.
The Olympia in Detroit opened in 1927. The Red Wings played there until December 1979, then moved to Joe Louis Arena. The Olympia was demolished in 1987.
Madison Square Garden, the third building of that name, stood on Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th streets from 1925. The Rangers played there until 1968, when the current Garden opened above Penn Station. The old building was demolished.
Why the buildings mattered on the ice
Rink dimensions were not fully standardized in this era, and the differences showed. Boston Garden's short sheet favored teams that could hit and crowd the puck along the boards; visiting clubs built around speed found less room than usual. Chicago Stadium's crowd sat steeply above the ice, and its organ and noise were treated by opponents as a genuine factor, not a cliché. The Forum, under its rebuilt roof after 1968 and the earlier version before, was regarded as one of the best ice surfaces in the league, which suited the Canadiens' skating teams.
These buildings were also owned, in several cases, by the same people who owned the teams, and they made money from many events besides hockey. Boxing cards, ice shows, rodeos and circuses filled the dates. A club's arena was often its owner's main business, which helps explain why owners were reluctant to add new franchises that might compete for the same touring attractions in nearby cities.
What became of each
Two of the six, the Forum and Maple Leaf Gardens, survive as buildings converted to other uses. The other four are gone. Several of the replacement arenas have themselves been replaced, including Detroit's Joe Louis Arena, closed in 2017. The architecture of the era survives mostly in photographs, and in the Winter Classic jerseys and the bright, small rinks those buildings defined.
The rivalries the era left behind
Six clubs playing each other 14 times a season produced rivalries that the league still depends on.
Montreal and Toronto is the oldest and most charged: the two Canadian clubs, the two biggest cities, the French-speaking and English-speaking cultures of the country. The clubs met in the Final in 1967 for the last time to date. They have been in the same division for most of the years since expansion, including every season from 2013-14 through 2025-26.
Montreal and Boston produced the most playoff meetings of any NHL rivalry. The Canadiens dominated the series for decades, beating Boston in the playoffs repeatedly through the 1950s, the 1960s and beyond. The rivalry has been kept in regular divisional play.
Detroit and Chicago was the central rivalry of the Western side of the league for decades. The two clubs were split across divisions from 1970, when Chicago moved to the West Division, until 1981, when they were reunited in the same division, and kept together through several realignments until 2013, when Detroit moved to the Eastern Conference. As clubs in opposite conferences, they meet only twice a season under the schedule format in use through 2025-26. The separation is the clearest case of realignment cutting an Original Six rivalry.
What realignment kept
Four of the six, Boston, Detroit, Montreal and Toronto, have shared the Atlantic Division since the 2013 realignment, apart from the temporary divisions of the pandemic-shortened 2020-21 season. That gives the league a regular schedule of games among four Original Six clubs, and the division has been sold on it. The Rangers' main rivals are now the Islanders, the Devils and the Flyers, clubs from later eras. Chicago's are the Blues and the clubs of the Central Division. The outdoor games have revived several of the old matchups, as our guide to the NHL Winter Classic shows.
Where the phrase "Original Six" came from
Nobody called the six clubs the Original Six while they were the whole league. There was no need. The NHL was simply the NHL.
The phrase took hold after the 1967 expansion, which added six clubs: the California Seals, the Los Angeles Kings, the Minnesota North Stars, the Philadelphia Flyers, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the St. Louis Blues. The league placed all six new clubs in a separate West Division, and the six established clubs formed the East Division. With two halves of a league that had to be distinguished, writers and fans needed a name for the older half. The established six became the Original Six.
The term spread through the 1970s and 1980s. By the time of later expansions it had become part of the league's own marketing.
Why the name stuck
The phrase works because it answers a real need. The 1967 expansion was the most dramatic change in the league's history, doubling its size in one season, and the clubs that existed before it had a shared identity that the new ones did not. The new clubs were placed in a separate division and played a different schedule, and the gap between them and the six on the ice was large in the first years. A Stanley Cup Final between an established club and an expansion club was usually short. St. Louis reached the Final in each of its first three seasons and was swept every time.
How the league grew from 12 to 32 clubs is covered in detail in our history of NHL expansion.
The six since 1967
The expansion did not end the six clubs' success. It spread it unevenly.
Montreal won ten more Cups after 1967, including four straight from 1976 to 1979, and its last in 1993. Detroit won four, in 1997, 1998, 2002 and 2008. Boston won three, in 1970, 1972 and 2011. Chicago won three, in 2010, 2013 and 2015. The Rangers won once, in 1994. Toronto has not won since 1967.
| Club | Total Stanley Cups | Cups since the 1967 expansion | Most recent Cup |
|---|---|---|---|
| Montreal Canadiens | 24 | 10 | 1993 |
| Toronto Maple Leafs | 13 | 0 | 1967 |
| Detroit Red Wings | 11 | 4 | 2008 |
| Boston Bruins | 6 | 3 | 2011 |
| Chicago Blackhawks | 6 | 3 | 2015 |
| New York Rangers | 4 | 1 | 1994 |
Totals are through the 2025 Stanley Cup Final and include the Cups won before each club's NHL era where the club itself won them: Montreal's 1916 title in the National Hockey Association and the 1918 and 1922 titles of the Toronto franchise under its earlier names. The figures change whenever one of the six wins again.
Toronto's wait and the 2013 Final
Toronto's drought is the longest in the league among clubs that have won before. The club has reached the playoffs many times since 1967 but has not reached the Final. It is the most discussed streak in Canadian hockey and the subject of more theories than most.
The 2013 Stanley Cup Final, Chicago against Boston, was the first Final between two Original Six clubs since 1979, when Montreal beat the Rangers. Chicago won in six games, scoring twice in the last 76 seconds of Game 6 to turn a 2-1 deficit into a 3-2 win. A Final between two of the six had once been the only kind possible. By 2013 it was a rare event, which says as much as anything about how the league has changed.
The traditions those clubs helped build, from engraving players' names on the Cup to the day each winner gets with the trophy, are explained in our guide to Stanley Cup traditions, and the rest of our hockey coverage sits on the ice hockey hub.