Of course we all know the SHL started at Season 1. We have records dating back that far, even some people still around from those years. We know the Winnipeg Jets were the very first winners of the Challenge Cup. Names like Jay McDonald, Sarmad Khan, and Joe Momma are legends.

But Season 1 wasn't the true beginning. What most people don't know is that - like the Olympic Games - the SHL we know and love was also created as a modern version of an ancient tradition. That's right. The very first SHL season took place about 93,000 years ago in what is today considered Canada. Since it would be a long while before the invention of agriculture, most cavemen were still primarily concerned with survival. But the neanderthal Canadians that first established the SHL (originally called the Sububa Honga Longa - for which no translation currently exists) were incredibly advanced for their time and were somehow able to sustain themselves while participating in time consuming leisure activities. Fortunately there are some records from the time that we are to decipher using their detailed cave symbols.

For example, we know the names of some of the teams:

The Big Valley Bears

The Rock City Clubbers

The Frozen Poop Slingers - I'm not 100% sure this translation is correct and I really hope it isn't.

We know the teams played a very simple version of hockey - using a large rounded stone. There is actually evidence that some of the more underhanded teams would chisel sharp edges into the puck to inflict maximum damage when they slapped it at opposing teams. Obviously this game was much slower than the current game. It usually featured something like 50 people a side, played on the entirety of whatever frozen pond or lake they could find. The nets were made of piles of snow between branch goal posts. If the rock got lodged in the snow, that was a goal. Games would last from sun up to sun down. The sticks were just clubs they used for beating eachother repurposed for puck whacking. Some modified their club to better suit this need, while others left their club as is to aid them in the fighting portion of the game.

Speaking of fighting - hockey at this point was pretty much 10% smacking the puck and 90% smacking your opponent. There were no penalties and no referees. Basically the only reason you didn't kill someone was because then everyone would start killing people and you couldn't play hockey anymore. Note that this did not stop at least one guy from dying every game.
Seasons were like 100 games long and not everyone played every game. Usually you just prayed to the gods that the opponent's big star was off getting busy with some hot cavegirls and didn't show up that day. Each team had a handful of serious hockey players. The one we know the most about was the great Ugh Ughson III.

Ugh Ughson III played for the Big Valley Bears. It might be a good time to mention that TPE in this time was very low. Ughson was far and away the most dominant player of the ancient SHL S1, boasting a whopping 22 TPE at the height of his career. Earning TPE was much harder back then because nobody could access the forums. Ughson lead the league with 2 goals per game, and according to stories passed around that time pretty much KO'd half the opposing team by himself. Assists were not a statistic because nobody cared unless you put the puck into the snow pile. Fights and hits were not a statistic at this point because it was assumed that if you did not have the rock you were beating the shit out of somebody.

Unfortunately for Ughson, he would lose in the S1 Challenge Cup finals due to the opposing team abusing certain mechanics and would die just a few games into S2 after taking a nasty shot from a sharp puck. Some say there are current SHL players that are descendants of his.

To bring things back full circle, the actual winners of the very first SHL season, triumphing over the Big Valley Bears in game 7 of the series, were none other than...

The Winnipeg Jets.

Yeah I forgot to mention the Jets were actually still around back then. And still were the winners of S1. Sorry to disappoint.

As a result of our findings and extensive research on the subject, I request that SHL management open up a new subforum in the SHL history section that will contain all of the knowledge we have about the original SHL. I think it would be very interesting for players new and old to rediscover things like the Bears - Jets rivalry, the great players of the past like Ughson, and the strategies they used back then (new fighting meta anyone?)

Thank you for reading.

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