Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: Who was the first Stanley Cup winner?
Donated in 1892 by Lord Stanley of Preston, the Governor General of Canada, the Stanley Cup was originally awarded to the top amateur team in Canada, who would then accept challenges from the winners of other leagues. From its inception until 1912, the Cup was nearly always won by teams from Montreal, Winnipeg, and Ottawa. In 1903 Ottawa won the Cup, after finishing the season tied for first in the Canadian Amateur Hockey League with the Montreal Victorias. They played a two-game, total-goal series for the league championship. The Montreal Hockey Club, who had held the Cup, finished third in the league and therefore lost the right to keep it.
The 2000–01 NHL season was the 84th regular season of the National Hockey League. Thirty teams each played 82 games. The Stanley Cup winners were the Colorado Avalanche, who won the best of seven series 4–3 against the New Jersey Devils. The focus of Colorado's Stanley Cup run was on star defenseman Ray Bourque, who was on a quest to win his first Stanley Cup championship in his illustrious 22-year career.
This was the last Stanley Cup Final to feature a team that did not host any games and also the last to feature neutral site games, which were held in Toronto on account of scheduling conflicts at Madison Square Garden.
This was only the second Stanley Cup Final contested by New York in which the Rangers hosted all of their home games. The first such Final, held in 1929, had lasted only two games. All other previous Finals contested by the Rangers had partly or entirely coincided with an annual circus formerly held at Madison Square Garden, compelling the Rangers to play Finals games at neutral sites and/or at the venues of their opponents.
These players and personnel (22 in all) won four Stanley Cups as members of the Islanders, and would also be a part of the Islanders in the 1984 Stanley Cup Finals. The Islanders would amass an NHL record of 19 straight playoff series wins and again reach the Stanley Cup Finals, but lost the 1984 Finals to the Edmonton Oilers in a rematch of the 1983 series.
† – Henning was a player on the 1980 team, a player-assistant coach on the 1981 team, and an assistant coach on the 1982 and 1983 teams. Henning assisted on 1980 Stanley Cup winning goal in overtime.
The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball (MLB) and concludes the MLB postseason. First played in 1903, the World Series championship is determined through a best-of-seven playoff and is a contest between the champions of baseball's National League (NL) and American League (AL). Often referred to as the "Fall Classic", the modern World Series has been played every year since 1903 with two exceptions: in 1904, when the NL champion New York Giants declined to play the AL champion Boston Americans; and in 1994, when the series was canceled due to the players' strike.
This was the first World Series played entirely on artificial turf. This was also the first World Series since 1920, and the last to date, in which neither team had won a World Series before. With their victory, the Phillies became the final team out of the original sixteen MLB teams to win a World Series. However, a Philadelphia team had won a World Series before, the last being the Philadelphia Athletics in , exactly a half-century before this Series; in a twist of fate, the Athletics would play thirteen years in Kansas City before eventually settling in Oakland.
On Wednesday, 3 November 1869, in a room above George Lee's Fruit Store, the Hamilton Football Club was formed. The club was first referred to as the Hamilton Tigers in their first game against the Toronto Argonauts in which Hamilton wore black and yellow for the first time, hence the nickname "Tigers." Hamilton Football Clubs have captured the Grey Cup in every decade of the 20th century, a feat matched by only one other franchise in the North American Major Leagues, the Rochester Redwings. In 1908, the Tigers won the "Dominion Championship", a year before the Grey Cup was presented. The only time that football was interrupted in Hamilton as a spectator sport was during the First and Second World Wars. After World War II the Hamilton Tigers Football Team started competition once again. During WWII, a new group in the City had been formed and they became known as the Hamilton Wildcats. The competition for fan participation was so great that both teams were unable to operate on a sound financial basis. It was decided that the two Clubs should amalgamate and form one representative team for Hamilton. The present name, "Tiger-Cats", and what is known as the modern era of football started in 1950.
Hamilton based football teams have captured the Grey Cup a total of 15-times, which is second best among Canadian cities (Toronto teams have won 21-times). The Hamilton Tiger-Cats have won eight, the Hamilton Tigers have won five and the Hamilton Flying Wildcats and the Hamilton Alerts each won once. The Hamilton Alerts were the first team from Hamilton to win the Grey Cup back in 1912 against the Toronto Argonauts in Hamilton at the old A.A.A. Grounds. The city of Hamilton has hosted the Grey Cup Finals a total of 10-times, the last one being in 1996 (84th Grey Cup) in the "Snow Bowl" where the Toronto Argonauts defeated the Edmonton Eskimos by a score of 43–37. This was also the only Grey Cup game in Hamilton that did not feature a Hamilton-based team.
Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in January 1993. The IIHF recognized the Czech Republic's team as the successor to Czechoslovakia and it retained its position in the top division. Slovakia's team began in the lowest division (Pool C) in 1994 and was forced to work its way up. Following this, the next decade was dominated by the so-called "Big Six"–Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, Sweden and the United States. From 1992 to 1996, five different teams won the World Championship. At the 1993 World Championships, Russia won its first title as an independent nation and the Czech Republic won its first medal (bronze). In 1994, the Canadian team finished the preliminary round undefeated and defeated Finland in the final to win their first World Championship since 1961. The following year in Sweden, the Finnish team won its first ever World Championship. Led by their top line of Saku Koivu, Ville Peltonen and Jere Lehtinen, the Finns defeated rival Sweden in the gold medal game. At the 1995 Pool B championships, Slovakia, led by Peter Šťastný won Pool B and was promoted to the top division, where it has remained ever since. In 1996, the Czech Republic won its first World Championship as a separate country. During this period, the United States was the only one of the "Big Six" not to win the World Championship, although they did win the 1996 World Cup of Hockey and their bronze at that year's World Championship was their first medal since 1962.
In the mid-1990s, several new teams such as Slovakia, Latvia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine were quickly improving and older nations such as Austria, France, Italy, Norway and Switzerland were at risk of being relegated to Pool B. The IIHF feared that it would lose advertising revenue if that happened, so the number of teams was increased to 16 starting in 1998.
In 1893, Stark Bro's held their first International New Fruit Fair. Jesse Hiatt, who owned an orchard in Peru, Iowa, sent samples of his fruit to compete in the contest for the best new fruit. Hiatt's apples won the judging, but his nametag could not be found. He submitted samples of the same apple the following year and won again. This, time there was a nametag and the apples could be identified. The Stark brothers traveled to the Hiatt farm and bought the rights to the Red Delicious apple in 1894.
On January 22, 1968, the ABA awarded a franchise to Milwaukee Professional Sports and Services, Inc. (Milwaukee Pro), a group headed by Wesley Pavalon and Marvin Fishman. A fan contest was held to name the new team, with over 40,000 fans participating. While the most-voted fan entry was the "Robins", named for Wisconsin's state bird, the contest judges went with the second-most popular choice, the "Bucks", which was a reference to Wisconsin's official wild animal, the white-tailed deer. One fan, R. D. Trebilcox, was awarded a new car for his part in reasoning why the Bucks was a good nickname, saying that bucks were "spirited, good jumpers, fast and agile." The Bucks marked a return of the NBA to Milwaukee after 13 years; their previous team, the Hawks, played for four seasons in the early 1950s before moving to St. Louis in 1955 (they are now based in Atlanta). In October, the Bucks played their first NBA regular-season game against the Chicago Bulls before a Milwaukee Arena crowd of 8,467. As is typical with expansion teams, the Bucks' first season (1968–69) was a struggle. Their first victory came in their sixth game as the Bucks beat the Detroit Pistons 134–118; they won only 26 more games in their first year. The Bucks' record that year earned them a coin flip against their expansion cousins, the Phoenix Suns, to see who would get the first pick in the upcoming draft. It was considered a foregone conclusion that the first pick in the draft would be Lew Alcindor of UCLA. The Bucks won the coin flip, but had to win a bidding war with the upstart American Basketball Association (ABA) to secure him.
The Canadian Football League is the highest level of play in Canadian football. The league was organized in 1956 as a cooperative agreement between two regional leagues, the Big Four (which dated to 1907) and the WIFU (which was founded in 1936), and became independent from Football Canada in 1958. The league now consists of nine teams, all based in Canada. The Grey Cup is awarded annually to the champion every November and is the highest attended sporting event in the nation. The oldest extant teams, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Toronto Argonauts, trace their origins to the late 1860s and early 1870s, which ranks them amongst the oldest professional sports teams of any kind still in existence on the continent. The CFL attempted an expansion into the United States in cities that had no NFL team between 1993 and 1995, though the expansion teams all either folded or relocated to Canadian cities.
By 1935, enough support had been garnered for the first Sugar Bowl. The game was played in Tulane Stadium, which had been built in 1926 on Tulane University's campus (before 1871, Tulane's campus was Paul Foucher's plantation, where Foucher's father-in-law, Etienne de Bore, had first granulated sugar from cane syrup). Warren V. Miller, the first president of the New Orleans Mid-Winter Sports Association, guided the Sugar Bowl through its difficult formative years of 1934 and 1935. An unusual 2-0 score marked the 1942 Sugar Bowl, in which the sole scoring play was a safety.
Rugby football in Canada had its origins in the early 1860s, and over time, a unique code of football known as Canadian football developed. Both the Canadian Football League (CFL), the sport's top professional league, and Football Canada, the governing body for amateur play, trace their roots to 1882 and the founding of the Canadian Rugby Football Union (later reorganized as the Canadian Rugby Union). In 1909, the Grey Cup was donated by the then Governor General of Canada Albert Grey, 4th Earl Grey, to recognize the top amateur rugby football team in Canada. From the 1930s to the 1950s, the two senior leagues of the CRU (the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union and the Western Interprovincial Football Union) gradually evolved from amateur to professional leagues, and found they had less and less in common with the amateur leagues, and consequently in 1956 formed a new umbrella organization, the Canadian Football Council. In 1958, the CFC left the CRU altogether and was renamed the Canadian Football League. By this time, teams from the amateur Ontario Rugby Football Union had stopped challenging for the Grey Cup, and ever since, it has been exclusively awarded to CFL teams. Since 1965, university teams have competed for the Vanier Cup.
The event's roots are traced to 1886 when the Calgary and District Agricultural Society held its first fair. In 1912, American promoter Guy Weadick organized his first rodeo and festival, known as the Stampede. He returned to Calgary in 1919 to organize the Victory Stampede in honour of soldiers returning from World War I. Weadick's festival became an annual event in 1923 when it merged with the Calgary Industrial Exhibition to create the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede.
Wimbledon Old Central Football Club were formed in 1889, taking its name from the Old Central School on Wimbledon Common where players had been pupils. The club's first match was a 1–0 victory over Westminster, and it only took seven years for success to come to Wimbledon as the club won both the Clapham League and the Herald League in 1895–96. Wimbledon won the Clapham League again in 1900–01, as well as two minor trophies. A meeting was convened on 1 May 1905, and the decision was taken to drop "Old Central" from the club's name – the club became Wimbledon Football Club, and under its new name the club won the South London Charity Cup the same year – however, excessive debts caused the club to fold in 1910. The club was restarted a year later under the name Wimbledon Borough, though "Borough" was dropped from the team's name after barely a year. The club continued to play on Wimbledon Common and at various other locations in the Wimbledon area until 1912, when the side settled at Plough Lane. Wimbledon joined the Athenian League for 1919–20, and in the second season in its new division finished as runners-up. The club then joined the Isthmian League. Winning four Isthmian League titles during the 1930s, and reaching the FA Amateur Cup final in 1934–35, Wimbledon began to prosper. The club reached another FA Amateur Cup final in 1946–47, and finished as runners-up in the league twice over the next few seasons.
Wimbledon won the Isthmian League for the fifth time in 1958–59 before starting a period of domination that saw three successive championships – 1961–62, 1962–63 and 1963–64. Wimbledon also lifted the FA Amateur Cup in 1962–63, beating Sutton United 4–2: the club's all-time top goalscorer, Eddie Reynolds, scored all four Wimbledon goals with his head, and in doing so became the only player to have headed in all four of his side's goals in a Wembley match – as of 2012, still a unique feat. Following these successes the decision was taken to turn professional for the 1964–65 season and to enter the Southern League. Wimbledon had continued success in their new league, finishing as runners-up at the first attempt. Wimbledon became nationally famous during an FA Cup run during the 1974–75 season: entering the competition at the first qualifying round, Wimbledon saw off first Bracknell Town, then Maidenhead United, Wokingham Town, Guildford & Dorking United, Bath City and Kettering Town to find themselves in the third round proper. They then became the first non-League team that century to beat a First Division side away from home by defeating Burnley at Turf Moor. In the fourth round the good form continued, as the team held the reigning First Division champions Leeds United to a 0–0 draw at Elland Road. Goalkeeper Dickie Guy saved a penalty from Peter Lorimer to earn a replay, which was narrowly lost 1–0 by an own goal in front of over 40,000 spectators at Selhurst Park. After winning the Southern League three times running from 1974–75 to 1976–77, Wimbledon were elected to The Football League in place of Workington for the 1977–78 season.
It was the first time since the 1996 postseason that the home team won both of the conference championship games. The Colts were the first dome team to win the Super Bowl in an outdoor game (the St. Louis Rams were the first dome team to win a Super Bowl, XXXIV inside the Georgia Dome in Atlanta). The 2006 Indianapolis Colts were the first division champion to win a Super Bowl with four postseason wins and the second division champion (2003 Carolina Panthers) to win a conference title with three postseason wins.
In the National League Division Series (NLDS) against the Phillies, Holliday homered twice as the Rockies swept. Colorado then advanced to the National League Championship Series (NLCS) to face the Diamondbacks and swept them in four games. Holliday batted .333 with two home runs and four RBI on his way to being named the NLCS MVP. Now having won 21 of 22 games, the Rockies earned their first-ever trip to the World Series where they opposed the Boston Red Sox. Holliday collected four hits in Game 2, but, after his fourth hit in the eighth inning with the Red Sox leading 2–1, closer Jonathan Papelbon immediately picked him off first base for the third out, and the Red Sox won by that same score. Boston eventually won the title by sweeping the Rockies, thus ending their season on a four-game losing streak.
The history of the Cleveland Browns American football team began in 1944 when taxi-cab magnate Arthur B. "Mickey" McBride secured a Cleveland franchise in the newly formed All-America Football Conference (AAFC). Paul Brown was the team's namesake and first coach. The Browns began play in 1946 in the AAFC. The Browns won each of the league's four championship games before the league dissolved in 1949. The team then moved to the more established National Football League (NFL), where it continued to dominate. Between 1950 and 1955, Cleveland reached the NFL championship game every year, winning three times.
The Rockies, along with the San Diego Padres, made MLB history on Opening Day, April 4, 1999, by playing a contest in Estadio de Béisbol Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico, making it the first Opening Day game held outside of the United States or Canada. Larry Walker won his second batting title by leading MLB with .379 average, setting a Rockies' club record, and the fourth-high single-season average since Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941. Besides winning the batting championship, Walker also led the major leagues in on-base percentage (.458), and slugging percentage (.710), becoming the first player to lead MLB in all three categories since George Brett in 1980, and the first National Leaguer since Stan Musial in 1943.On April 4, 1999, the Rockies made history as they played their Opening Day contest at Estadio de Béisbol Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico, marking the first time Major League Baseball (MLB) commenced the regular season outside of the United States or Canada. Their opponent were the defending National League champion San Diego Padres. Vinny Castilla, a native of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, delighted the crowd with four hits including a double. Dante Bichette also collected four hits, drove in four runs, and homered, as Colorado won 8–2. The official attendance was 27,104.
The modern era of West Virginia basketball history began in 1955, with the emergence of sophomore guard Hot Rod Hundley and newly appointed head coach Fred Schaus. The Mountaineers finished with a 19–11 record, and earned the first NCAA Tournament appearance in school history under Hundley's lead. The team entered the tournament with a #19 ranking, the first Top 20 ranking in school history. However, they lost to the #3 La Salle Explorers in the first round of the tourney, 95–61.
Prior to organized ice hockey expanding to any serious extent outside Canada, the concept that the Stanley Cup champion ought to be recognized as the "world champion" was already firmly established – Stanley Cup winners were claiming the title of "world champions" by no later than the turn of the century. After the Portland Rosebuds, an American-based team, joined the PCHA in 1914, the trustees promptly issued a formal statement that the Cup was no longer for the best team in Canada, but now for the best team in the world. Ice hockey in Europe was still in its infancy at this time, so it was without much controversy that winners of the Stanley Cup continued styling themselves as the "world champions" just like in baseball. Two years later, the Rosebuds became the first American team to play in the Stanley Cup Final. In 1917, the Seattle Metropolitans became the first American team to win the Cup. After that season, the NHA dissolved, and the National Hockey League (NHL) took its place.
With Vegas' trip to the 2018 Finals, a brand-new team in the league has now reached the Stanley Cup Finals every 50 years dating back to 1918. The Toronto Arenas reached the 1918 Stanley Cup Finals and won the Cup, but this was the first year of the new NHL (after every team except the Toronto Blueshirts left the National Hockey Association). The St. Louis Blues reached the 1968 Stanley Cup Finals and got swept by the Montreal Canadiens, but this was a year in which six brand-new expansion teams all entered the league at the same time and were all placed in the same division and the winner of that West Division would face the winner of the East Division. As such, 2018 was the first of these three occurrences where a team in their inaugural season was not guaranteed a chance to reach the finals beforehand.
Entering the playoffs as Presidents' Trophy winners for the highest team point total during the regular season, the Red Wings met the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 2008 Stanley Cup Finals. Despite a Game 5, triple-overtime victory by the Penguins to stave off elimination, Lidström and the Red Wings defeated Pittsburgh in Game 6 to capture the Stanley Cup. In doing so, Lidström became the first European-born-and-trained captain to win the Stanley Cup. In 1934, Charlie Gardiner, a goaltender born in Scotland, had captained the Chicago Black Hawks to win the Stanley Cup and in 1938, Johnny Gottselig, a left winger born in Russia, also captained Chicago to a championship, but both players were trained in Canada.
The Blackhawks also became the first Presidents' Trophy winners to win the Stanley Cup since the Red Wings in 2008. They are the most recent NHL team to accomplish this feat.