1893 AHAC season

On December 15, 1892, the AHAC elected its officers for the season:

• President - F. M. S. Jenkins, Ottawa
• 1st Vice. Pres. - J. Crathern, Victorias
• 2nd Vice. Pres. - A. Laurie, Quebec
• Secretary-Treasurer - J. A. Findlay, Montreal
• Council - A. Ritchie, Crystals; G. Carpenter, Shamrocks; M. Costigan, McGill; A. Z. Palmer, Ottawa Rebels; J. Farwell, Sherbrooke

The season came down to the wire between Montreal Hockey Club (MAAA) and Ottawa Hockey Club (the future Senators). MAAA won the season clinching game on March 10 vs Crystals, but two disputes needed to be settled at a special meeting on March 13 before the AHAC title was confirmed to MAAA. The meeting took place at the offices of James Caruthers at 3416 Av. du Parc, Montreal (formerly 699 Sherbrooke St.). The decisions both mattered as MAAA ended up finishing one game ahead of the Ottawa Hockey Club.

First protest: Ottawa and Quebec got into a dispute. Quebec protested their loss on January 21 in Quebec and refused to play in the return match until the protest was decided. The return match was scheduled for February but was not played until March 17. However, the matter was ruled in favor of Ottawa. At the same time, Ottawa was in a dispute with the Ontario Hockey Association over the location of the final match for the Ontario championship. In the end, Ottawa seceded from the Ontario association.

Second protest: In the March 3 game between MAAA and Crystals, a Crystals player was sent off and the penalty carried over into overtime. Crystals tried to argue that the overtime consisted of a new game and that they should be restored to full strength. They decided to not play the overtime. An unlikely protest said the papers. It was denied and MAAA was credited with the victory.

The end result was that MAAA was declared AHAC champions, and would eventually be handed the Stanley Cup. It is not clear if they knew they were also playing for Lord Stanley's Cup, which had been donated the year before, but they were aware it was an AHAC clinching game. It would be known as the Dominion Challenge Cup until April 30 when the Board of Trustees released rules for the "Stanley Hockey Championship Cup" and announced that MAAA's name was already engraved on the Cup and that it would soon be presented to them.

Montreal HC won the championship for placing first in the regular season. This was Montreal HC's third straight championship since the Championship Trophy was inaugurated in 1891. According to the terms for the trophy, Montreal HC was allowed to keep the Trophy.^[2] A new version was struck for following seasons (this new version is on display at the MAA building at 2070 rue Peel Street, Montreal). The version won 1891-1893 that was gifted to Montreal is on display in the collection of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

As champions of the AHAC, the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup (known today as the Stanley Cup) was to be awarded to Montreal as its inaugural champion. On May 15, 1893, Sheriff John Sweetland finally presented the trophy to the MAAA president J. A. Taylor during the MAAA annual meeting at the Montreal Gymnasium SW corner of Mansfield and de Maisonneuve in Montreal. This was the first MAAA clubhouse before they moved to Peel Street in 1905. Each player received a souvenir gold ring as a gift of the MAAA.^[3] Disputes between the Montreal HC and the MAAA kept the Cup in the MAAA hands until it was accepted by the Club on February 23, 1894.^[4]

Therefore, contrary to what was previously believed, the first Stanley Cup was not awarded at the Victoria Skating Rink but at Crystal Palace — also known as Crystal Rink — on March 10, 1893, at what is now rue Jeanne Mance just south of Blvd. St. Joseph in Montreal. This was not the original Crystal Palace, which had stood where the Palace Theatre would later be built on Sainte-Catherine Street; rather, it was the same structure, dismantled and relocated to that site in 1878. The building was lost to fire in 1896.

The March 11, 1893 Montreal Daily Star (see image to the right) demonstrates that the Montreal Hockey Club understood the stakes: a victory that night would secure the AHAC trophy as regular season champions. The Stanley Cup itself had been donated the previous year by Governor-General Lord Stanley of Preston, and the players possibly knew it also was on the line — the Cup appears prominently in the team's 1893 photograph (see above), positioned in front of the AHAC trophy. No playoff existed yet to determine a champion (unless a tie-breaker was needed); the title went to whoever finished atop the regular season standings. That would change the following year, when hockey's first playoff was held at the Victoria Skating Rink in Montreal.

• ^ Unknown who played Center, Rover, Right Wing and Left Wing, so the players are listed as forwards

non-players=

• Harry L. Shaw (Manager/Secretary-Treasurer)
• James Taylor (President of AAA) (Missing from team picture)

• List of pre-NHL seasons
• List of Stanley Cup champions