The Original Six: A Quick History of the Era That Defined NHL Hockey

The Original Six Jogger is named for an era that ended in 1967 but still shapes how hockey is talked about. From 1942 to 1967, the entire National Hockey League was six teams. Here's why those 25 years still matter.

How the league shrank to six

The NHL formed in 1917 with five teams. Through the 1920s and 1930s the league fluctuated between six and ten franchises as Depression-era economics and World War II travel restrictions killed weaker markets. By 1942, attrition had stabilized the league at six clubs: the Boston Bruins, Chicago Black Hawks (now Blackhawks), Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens, New York Rangers, and Toronto Maple Leafs.

The 1942-to-1967 period — formally called the 'Original Six era' even though only Toronto, Montreal, and the Rangers were truly original franchises — was a 25-year stretch of league stability that didn't repeat afterward. The 1967 expansion doubled the league to 12 teams overnight; subsequent expansions have grown the league to 32 teams as of 2026.

Why the era defined hockey culture

Twenty-five years of six teams playing the same opponents 14 times a year built up rivalries, traditions, and aesthetics that still define hockey culture six decades later. Toronto-Montreal isn't just a hockey game; it's a 100+ year cultural-political axis. Boston-New York is 50+ years of border-region tension. Detroit-Chicago is the original Western Division.

The aesthetics also calcified during the era. The visual signatures of all six Original Six teams — the Canadiens' bleu-blanc-rouge, the Maple Leafs' blue-and-white, the Red Wings' red-and-white winged-wheel, the Blackhawks' black-and-red Indian-head crest, the Bruins' yellow-and-black hub-and-spokes, the Rangers' red-white-blue diagonal — all locked in during the Original Six period. Modern jerseys still reference those originals heavily.

What the Original Six era was actually like

Hockey in the 1942–1967 window was very different from the modern game. The schedule was 50–60 games (vs the modern 82). The roster was ~17 players (vs 23). The salary cap didn't exist; player movement was limited. Most players worked offseason jobs in trades, sales, or family businesses. The Stanley Cup playoff was 4 teams (vs the modern 16). And there were exactly two divisions of three teams each — the simplicity of the structure is what makes the era memorable.

Modern hockey-history scholarship treats the era as a kind of golden-age parable — a period when the sport was small enough for the same fans to know the same 100-or-so players' names and storylines. The contemporary 32-team league makes that impossible by structure. The Original Six was the last era when 'knowing every player in the league' was a feasible thing for one fan.

Why Cloche named a jogger after it

The Original Six Jogger pulls from this history specifically because the era's six teams are the historic anchors of the sport — the franchises every other NHL franchise was measured against during the 1967–1990 expansion years and still gets compared to today. Naming the foundational pant in a hockey-warmup line after the foundational franchises in the league is the kind of inside-baseball reference that signals 'we know hockey' to hockey customers.

It's also a quiet design choice that doesn't try to capitalize on any one team's IP. The jogger isn't licensed to the Bruins or the Rangers; it just nods to the era. Hockey customers get the reference; non-hockey customers don't, and that's intentional.