Alberta Minor Roller Hockey Association

Roller (Quad) Hockey was created in the early 1900’s and played wearing Roller Skates field hockey sticks and a ball. The flat Inline puck was invented in the 60’s and with the help of quad skates, created a new sport called puck hockey. This started in Texas and quickly spread throughout the USA. The game we now know as Roller Hockey or Inline Hockey began to take shape. In 1980, the modern version of the Inline Skate was invented by the American company Roller Blade- it naturally began to be a term players used to describe this hockey sport on wheels with their roller blades. At this time players began to shift from the quad skate to the more manoeuvrable inline skate to play Puck Hockey. The game of Puck Hockey quickly took over in popularity over the older Roller (Quad) Hockey, while North Americans continued to promote the term Roller Hockey. Over the last 30 years, various levels of governing bodies started to form, the technical term of Inline-Roller Hockey or just Inline Hockey was used to identify the new sport.

As time has gone by, the country where the sport of Inline Hockey is most popular is also the country that refers to it as roller hockey. It is correct to refer to the sport as either Inline Hockey or Roller Hockey, but the true technical term to describe the sport is Inline-Roller Hockey.