Coloured Hockey League
The Coloured Hockey League was an all-black ice hockey league founded in Nova Scotia in 1895, which featured teams from across Canada's Maritime Provinces. The league operated for several decades lasting until 1930.
With as many as a dozen teams, over 400 African Canadian players from across Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island participated in competition. The Coloured Hockey League is credited by some as being the first league to allow the goaltender to leave his feet to cover a puck in 1900. This practice was not permitted elsewhere until the formation of the National Hockey League in 1917. In their book Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895-1925, historians George and Darril Fosty also claim that the first player to use the slapshot was Eddie Martin of the Halifax Eureka in 1906.