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The 1917–18 Toronto Hockey Club season was the first season of the new ''Toronto'' franchise in the newly organized National Hockey League (NHL). The team was intended as a 'temporary' franchise, operating without an official club nickname (the press would dub them the "Blue Shirts" or "Torontos", and in 1948 the NHL would engrave "Toronto Arenas" on the Stanley Cup as the 1917–18 winner) and without a formal organization separate from the Toronto Arena Company that managed the Arena Gardens. Despite this, the team came together to win the first NHL Championship, competing against existing teams that had transferred directly from the National Hockey Association (NHA). Toronto would go on to win the Stanley Cup by defeating the Pacific Coast Hockey Association champion Vancouver Millionaires – the first Stanley Cup for an NHL team and the second Cup for a Toronto team after the Toronto Blueshirts' victory in the 1913–14 season of the NHA. ==Team business== A series of disputes in the NHA with Toronto Blueshirts owner Eddie Livingstone led the owners of the four non-Toronto teams to resign from the NHA and create the NHL for the 1917–18 season. The owners turned down a proposal from the management of the Toronto Arena Company to create a new Toronto-based franchise to join the other former NHA teams in a five team NHL. When the Quebec Bulldogs announced they didn't have enough financing to ice a team for the NHL's first season, the NHL granted a temporary franchise to the Toronto Arena Company, maintaining a balanced four team league and providing representation to the second largest market in Canada. Toronto Arena Company reached an agreement to lease most of Livingstone's NHA players, as Livingstone found himself in a dormant one team NHA. The Toronto Arena Company paid players on a cash basis, and many players played without a contract. The players used the same uniform as the previous NHA season – blue with a white 'T'. While agreement was reached on leasing the players, financial terms were not settled and this would lead to Livingstone filing a post-season lawsuit against the Toronto Arena Company.〔 This dispute included a disagreement regarding the distribution of revenues from the Toronto Stanley Cup games in 1917, resulting in the Toronto club never engraving their name on the Cup to memorialize their series victory. In 1948, the NHL engraved "1918 Toronto Arenas" on the Cup, using the official nickname of the closely related 1918–19 Toronto franchise. In response to the lawsuit, instead of returning the players to Livingstone, or even paying Livingstone, Toronto Arena Company returned their temporary franchise to the NHL and immediately formed a new club, the Toronto Arena Hockey Club, popularly known as the Toronto Arenas. The new club was a standalone corporation that could exist separate from any legal action. While the temporary 1917–18 Toronto franchise 'ceased' to exist, it is still considered the first step of today's ongoing NHL Toronto franchise ("Toronto Hockey Club" to "Toronto Arenas" to "Toronto St. Patricks" to "Toronto Maple Leafs"), and an unofficial continuation of the NHA Toronto Blueshirts franchise since the 1917–18 team was a nearly complete (though unpaid) leasing of the NHA team of 1916–17. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「1917–18 Toronto Hockey Club season」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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