FIRST-EVER NHL GAME STARTED IN MONTREAL, NOT OTTAWA.

Sorry, Ottawa. Evidence unearthed by a local journalism professor and hockey history sleuth indicates the first-ever NHL game started about half an hour earlier in Montreal on Dec. 19, 1917, clinching bragging rights for that city.

There were two games that night, one between the Ottawa Hockey Club and the Montreal Canadiens in Ottawa and the second between the Montreal Wanderers and the Toronto Hockey Club in Montreal.

The game in Ottawa was slated to start at 8: 30 p. m., but it didn’t get underway until 15 minutes later after last-minute contract negotiations. All duly reported by the Ottawa Journal, says Randy Boswell, a journalism professor at Carleton University who started mining newspaper archives to find the missing pieces of historical puzzles as a reporter at the Ottawa Citizen.

But when, exactly, the puck dropped that fateful night in Montreal has been lost to history.

The Montreal Gazette didn’t record the start time, says Boswell, whose interest in the which- game- was- first question was piqued last month after NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman announced plans to celebrate the league’s 100th anniversary with a game in Ottawa between the Senators and Canadiens. In his statement, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson called the Dec. 16 game a “celebration of the 100th anniversary of the very first NHL game, which took place in the nation’s capital in 1917.”

Boswell set out to find out if Watson’s statement was strictly true.

Boswell found a key bit of information in an advertisement in the defunct Frenchl anguage newspaper Le Canada. The ad stated 8: 15 p.m. as the start time for the Montreal game.

“Old ( newspaper) hacks seem to capture incidental facts that elude historians. It gets recorded, then it gets ignored for many decades,” he says.

Boswell’s discovery also clears up any dispute about other NHL firsts. Wanderers defenceman Dave Ritchie scored the first NHL goal in Montreal about a minute and a half into the game. In Ottawa, Canadiens star Joe Malone opened the scoring six and a half minutes into the Ottawa game. The credit goes to Ritchie.

Randy Boswell’s discovery confirms these NHL firsts:

First NHL game: Toronto vs. Montreal Wanderers, Montreal Arena, Dec. 19, 1917, 8:15 p.m. First NHL goal: Dave Ritchie, Montreal Wanderers, 1:32 of first period (according to Le Canada game report) First NHL puck- drop: Either Jack Marshall or Tom Melville ( referees of game between Toronto and Wanderers). First NHL hat trick: Harry Hyland, Montreal Wanderers. First NHL goalie to record a win: Bert Lindsay ( father of NHL legend Ted Lindsay), Montreal Wanderers. First NHL “natural” hat trick: Joe Malone, Montreal Canadiens (vs. Ottawa, Dec. 19, 1917). First NHL penalty: Art Ross, Montreal Wanderers (infraction unknown).